


A Daughter Lost, A Father Found

by Phoenixflames12



Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Book 3: Voyager, Book 4: Drums of Autumn, F/M, bring tissues for chapter 6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2018-11-28 14:10:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 39,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11419641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenixflames12/pseuds/Phoenixflames12
Summary: What if Brianna Ellen Randall had gone through the stones instead of Claire?





	1. Going Through The Stones

**Author's Note:**

> A canon-divergence that deals with chapter 24 of Voyager featuring long lost fathers and expectant, hesitant daughters.

_‘I don’t know whether I could find Jamie Fraser or not; or maybe only you can. But if you won’t try, then I will.’ Voyager (Chapter 23: Craigh na Dune)_

 

The words echo eerily through her head as she steps up to meet the stone. The roaring is becoming stronger with every minute that passes, the agonising image of her mother turning blindly into Roger’s shoulder seared across her vision.

_But someone has to go._

_Someone has to find him, has to tell him about the joyful outcome of his sacrifice, that the bloody hour spent on Culloden Moor was not one spent in vain._

 

She takes another step. Tries to imagine him, tall and long-legged and graceful, just as her Mother had described him. A broad face, with the same lines, the same burning blue eyes with their slant that matched her own. Tries to…

 

The last step is the hardest. She can still feel Roger’s eyes boring into her back, willing her forward, willing her on.

 

 _But if you won’t try, then I will._ The confidence that had rung in her voice seems a long way off now and she swallows, squeezing her eyes shut against the unbearable roaring that assaults her ears.

 

_We owe it to him, Mama. Somebody has to find him, and tell him._

She swallows back a sudden, desperate sob and forces her body into oblivion.

 

* * *

 

 

_The world spinning, falling._

_Her grasp on reality slackening as all she knows, all she has ever known, is yanked away into nothingness._

_The sensation of being pulled into nothingness, her soul screaming past a thousand other souls, all jostling for a space in a great, bewildering perhaps._

_All her limbs screaming, her synapses sending shockwave after shockwave from her brain down her spine, explosions of irrelevance exploding and imploding at an impossible speed._

_She surrenders to the noise. The small part of her still caught in the present, in ‘her’ time, reaches out and prays with all its’ might for deliverance._

_She hopes that it will be enough._

* * *

 

 

The rain is thick; heavy droplets falling in a steady, steel-like drum onto her face.

 

Gritting her teeth, she tries to open an eye; her whole body aching with effort. The moor stretches on in front of her; a great, green expanse of bog-myrtle, cotton grass and heather, all bathed in a faint mist of droplets.

 

 _This was Scotland_ , she thought. _Not the Scotland that she had experienced on the drive from the airport to the Reverend Wakefield’s wake, not the Scotland that she had seen rising in the pale, pink washed dawn breaking over Craigh na Dune, but her father’s Scotland._ The words gave her a certain, tentative thrill as she thinks them.

_The Scotland of clans and targes and broadswords and tartan. The Scotland where the Gaidhlig was spoken freely and without suspicious glances over shoulders, as Roger had told her with a wry grin, tucked up in armchairs by the fire in the Reverend’s study as they poured over documents._

_Roger._ His face slowly swims into memory, jolting her with such force that she feels as if she has been punched in the stomach. It is followed in succession by her mother, her dark eyes blurred by tears as they took each other in for the last time, committing every feature to memory.

 

_Mama. Oh Mama! I won’t fail you! I promise!_

_Jamie._

 

_That anchor point to which she had clung through the chaos of the passage into the past, her single hold on sanity._

 

Struggling upright into a sitting position, she tries to get her bearings. The gown is soaked through, clinging to her skin, the cloak that her mother had clasped around her neck heavy with moisture.

 

She was alive, was the next thought. Alive and sitting, she realises, with a quick glance upward, under the storm slashed branches of a rowan tree, its branches black against the rain soaked sky.

 

 _Rowan trees were seen as protection against witchcraft and enchantment, still are in fact._ Her mother had told her that with a wry smile, something that she hadn’t been able to place gleaming in her eyes.

 

Struggling upwards and biting back a sudden wave of nausea, she grips the branches of the rowan tree and surveys the landscape below her.

 

She sways for a moment, still feeling the horribly ominous presence of the stones at her back. Snaking down below the hill is a road, a dark line that snaked silver through the soaking greenery of the moor. If what her gut was telling her is correct, then the road would somehow take her to Edinburgh and then…

 _Then you look for him,_ a small but very firm voice in the back of her mind tells her. _And find him. There was no telling where Jamie Fraser, her father, might be now, but she hoped, offering a small prayer up to whatever saint might be listening, that he would be in Edinburgh._

Setting her teeth against the chattering cold and pulling the heavy cloak further around her, she begins to move off the hill and down towards her father and her future. 


	2. Edinburgh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brianna arrives in Edinburgh and tries to find word of the elusive A. Malcolm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who read, reviewed and left kudos on the first chapter of this! I'm so happy that you're all enjoying it and I hope that this one lives up to your expectations.

 

The coach ride from Inverness to Edinburgh is long and jolting along a road filled with potholes and stained dark with mud. Brianna had eaten one of the squashed sandwiches in the small packet that her mother had pressed into her hands already, savouring the rich oiliness of the peanut butter and the tartness of the jelly catching between her teeth.

 

She had found herself pressed against the window of the large, must smelling coach with the high odour of urine that hid the reek of sweat, fear and anticipation that she knows must be radiating off her in waves. She had discovered that the chamber pot was used in inclement weather, much like the cold grey sky pinpricked with splatters of driving rain outside was turning out to be.

 The countryside they pass is strange, a flat green, grey landscape scattered with tiny crofts and moss covered dykes held under a sky where the sun scattered itself in incriments of light. On the horizon a thin, silver gleam heralds the Firth of Forth.

 

The further the coach jolts away from the damp, drizzle wet stones of the coaching inn she begins to feel layers of herself being peeled away with it. Begins to feel the overwhelming sense of hopelessness that had gripped her as she had struggled along the road, tripping and cursing the holes and the heady smell of wet vegetation peel away.

 Struggled and cursing the fact that she was here, alone, with only a reinforced pocket of coins stitched into the skirts of her gown, a waterproof package that tugged at her heart every time she thought about it and her Mothers’ tear stained kiss on her cheek. Pressing her cheek to the window and keeping the hood of her cloak up, she watches straggly bands of small children run after the carriage, faces white with hunger. They follow the coach for a mile or so, before scattering, seeping back into the landscape.

 

Her heart aches at the sight. Aches at the fact that she is here clutching the last rich, sweet moments of her old life and the children that follow the coach with their wide eyes and high, pinched cheeks have nothing.

 

Aches at the fact that it is 1766, twenty years after the Rising that her parents had tried desperately and risked themselves to prevent, and the reprucessions were still being felt. She could hear as much being said in low, grumbling tones in the depths of the carriage around her. Food was still short and crops were still failing after a series of bad winters and wet springs and there was nothing to be done but either migrate to the cities in hope of better work, or starve.

 

Unconsciously she feels her hand reach for the reinforced pocket, feeling the reassuring clink of metal brush against her chilled fingers.

 

_Two golden guineas, six sovereigns, twenty-three shillings, eighteen florins ninepence, ten halfpence, twelve farthings and a handful of copper doits that she and Roger and haggled for; spending four days trudging through the streets of London, the icy October wind rising in a murky chill off the Thames. A small fortune, her mother had told them both, her eyes wide in the evening light.  It felt like a lifetime ago now._

_It seemed like a lifetime ago now that she had sat in the study with Roger and her mother, Roger’s lean face flickering in and out of the lamplight as he searched for the small fortune that they had amassed, secured in plastic bags, then heaped in glinting piles of gold and silver on one of the small oak coffee tables with its usual groaning weight of books and folders and papers pushed aside beside the fireplace. The room had been a cacoon of warmth, the book lined shelves emitting a pleasingly familiar scent of ink, old vellum and aged leather, silently guarding the clutter of tables and oddities that crowded the room all under the gaze of slashed windows set high in the wall._

 

‘I’ll bring him back to you Mama’, she had whispered at the last moment, drinking in Claire’s scent, a hint of a smile flickering on her lips.

 

_She was here and he was here, somewhere. That was all that mattered._

A Malcolm.

 

Alexander Malcolm.

 

James Alexander Malcolm Mackenzie Fraser.

 

The name had been a lifeline thrown to her in the depths of despair that her Father’s, _Frank’s,_ she corrects herself with a shiver running through her ribs, death had caused and she had grabbed hold of it, unsure where it would lead.

 

Brianna passes the time that it takes for the carriage to jolt to a halt outside nameless coaching inns and change horses or pick up passengers in a daze. She barely feels the changing bodies beside her, only registering the slight ease and sag of the dark plum covered velvet seats with mild interest. Outside Linlithgow, a plump young lawyer named Wallace had tried to persuade her into a game of chess, but she declined, saying as calmly as she could that she had no eye for the game.

 

 _A small lie,_ she thinks, ruefully, watching his body sag at the rejection and trying to smile her apology. Frank had taught her how to play when she was about eight or so, thinking that with her head for mathematics, she would enjoy the game.

Her heart clenches at the memory of the many childhood evenings when he was not working late at the university and she had finished her homework, that they would spend sitting in the living room at the house on Fury Street, bent over a board, watching the carved wooden figures dance before her eyes. Occasionally a dog would interrupt the game, padding over and thrusting a big head into her lap and she would laugh and scratch behind its’ ears, watching Frank’s mask of concentration slip for a moment into a delighted smile.

 

‘ _I’m sorry Daddy’,_ she thinks, pressing her face up against the glass, looking out over the rolling patches of green, grey and brown countryside as the coach rattled onwards towards the Forth. She touches the small, hard packet in the pocket of her skirt and wonders how long it will be before the coach reached Edinburgh.

 

* * *

 

 

The coach finally ground to a halt into the backyard of Boyd’s Whitehouse Inn at the foot of the Royal Mile.

 

Blinking into the weak, winter sunshine; she feels wobbly on her feet, pins and needles aching up her legs from sitting for so long. The sharpness of the light seems almost blinding after the dimness of the coach and, after shielding her eyes against the glare, she basks in it, shaking off the stuffy confines of the journey.

 

She is here. In Edinburgh, in 1766. It doesn’t seem quite real yet, but as she breathes in the scent of mud and, salt and manure underlying the rich earthy smell of vegetables brought in from the country mixed with blood from the butchers, she realises that it is. It is market day, she could easily loose her companions and slip away to find Jamie, wherever he was.

At the coach, the ostlers were heaving bags and portmanteaux and dumping them apparently at random within the crowd, starting up a chorus of incoherent cries and shouts. She presses into the crowd, bumping and jostling her way up the slope onto the Royal Mile as fast as her voluminous skirts would allow. It was lucky that it was market day, she would be safe here.

 

Hoiking up her skirts, she runs. Her strides are long and full, setting off sudden, strange memories of High School sports days, racing round a grassy strip, feet pounding through lines of crisp, white paint.

Memories of her arms rising and falling as she breathes, heart thundering in her ears, salt sweat dripping into eyes that burned towards the finish line. Her parents would be there, Frank in a crisp linen linen suit, open necked shirt and hat; dark eyes glowing; her mother, when she could get the time off work, in a sundress and pearls; _Jamie’s pearls?_ She thinks now, beaming with pride as she streaked past, arms outstretched to cross the line.

 

And now she slows, listening. She has skidded onto Niddry Street, heart thumping, blood thundering through her ears like an escaped pickpocket. No one pays her any attention as she stands there, trying to catch her breath, moving with her eyes on the street to find a space to sit and watch and gain her bearings. The occasional man, shorter now and shorter than her by at least a foot, looks her over curiously, as she sits with her elbows on her knees, the bright lime green skirts of the Jessica Gutenberg spilling about her like the great, tart filling of the key lime pies of childhood puddings.

 

‘Ye alright there, lass?’ The accents are mixed, the soft Highland burr that she remembers, achingly from Roger (has it only been four days since she left him and her mother in the pale dawn light at Craigh na Dune?), the clipped rise and fall of London English, the soft, impenetrable babble of what she supposed was the Gailidgh. Used as she was to the flat, nasal tones of her Boston childhood, hearing the cacophony of voices all rising and falling over each other felt strangely like coming home.

 

 She gives each man a firm, blue look down her nose and says nothing.

 

_What is there to say?_

_They may know of Alexander Malcolm, they may not._

_Best to just get on and make the best of it._

Swallowing, her stomach growling suddenly alerts her to the fact that she is very hungry.

 

She has had nothing to eat since a hasty breakfast of rough parritch and tough, boiled mutton at the posting inn at Linlithgow; and her stomach cries for food. Glancing carefully about, she pulls out one of the remaining sandwiches; the bread battered and broken so the butter and jelly oozed in together and takes a bite.

 

Rich oil seeps through her teeth; transporting her instantly back to childhood. Instantly back to the house on Frury Street and peering over the edge of the table as her mother slathered peanut butter and jelly on thick, white slices of bread.

 

She sighs, feeling jam and bread and butter stick to her teeth and swallows the last remnants of her old life, squeezing her eyes shut.

 

 _You are dithering Randall,_ that expression is so reminiscent of her mother and how her heart aches!

 

Brushing the crumbs from her skirts and taking a steadying breath, she gets to her feet, stepping hastily back as a dray cart rattles past, a small urchin with trousers two sizes too big and a mat of undefinably coloured hair jumps off the tailguard.

 

Before she knows what she’s doing, she catches him by the arm, watching the grey eyes grow wide in the pale, pinched face as he takes her in.

 

‘Excuse me,’ she cannot help the nasality of her Boston accent and he squints at her, obviously sizing her up. _A foreigner. A Sassenach. An Outlander._

‘I… I’m looking for a printer- a Mr Malcolm. Alexander Malcolm?’ The name still feels strange on her tongue, foreign, as if she is intruding, has no right to say it.

 

The grey eyes narrow in thought, the pale face with its’ smattering of dirt and freckles tight in concentration.

 

‘Oh, aye, mistress,’ he says at last. ‘ Printer’s shop it be, just down the way and to your left. Cairfax Close.’ She could have hugged him. She nods, biting her tongue to stop herself, she smiles again and gropes in her pocket, pressing a doit into the outstretched, grubby paw. The boy stares at it for a moment and then grins at her, tugging at his forelock before disappearing into the street.

 

Cairfax Close.

 

Her father not only had a name now, but a place. She hugs herself for a moment, fighting down the urge to whoop in delight.

 

He was here. Living, breathing, working as a printer under an assumed name, just as the article that Roger had unearthed had allowed her to believe.

 

Edging her way back into the crowd, she moves slowly towards the opening to Cairfax Close, yawning black and open across the expanse of the Royal Mile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to read and review! Comments, suggestions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x


	3. James Alexander Malcolm Mackenzie Fraser

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the end of her journey through Edinburgh, Brianna finds the print shop in Cairfax Close and the man whom she believes to be her father.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to read and review the first two chapters of this! I'm sorry that this one is slightly late in coming, but I hope that you enjoy it!

 

Cairfax Close yawns black and open as she hurries down the cobbled street, keeping as close to the rough stone walls as she can. One eye watches the tenement windows, her ears open for the occasional, rough shout of ‘Gardez-lous’ followed by a cascade of sweetly stinking sludge; faeces, both human and animal all mixed in with vegetable peelings, bone scraps and the high, sweet scent of urine. Pulling her cloak closer over her nose, she hurries on; dodging, winding her way down the thickly compact streets.

 

The air is thick and heavy with impending rain, the moisture catching at her hair and forcing it into a soft curl. She pushes it back under the hood of the cloak as best she can and hurries on, trying not to think what awaited her. Trying not to think and yet unable to stop the small knot of excitement from bubbling up in her throat, the prickles of nervous sweat catching on clammy palms.

 

Her heart is hammering somewhere in her throat, blood pounding in her ears. The close is long and narrow, winding through Edinburgh’s underbelly. Shadows leapt at her, street vendors and tradesmen pressing her to buy goods, but she ignores them, a long fingered hand raised up in apology.

_Would he be there?_

_Or had the urchin mislead her entirely and there was no Alexander Malcolm, printer or worse still, more than one, in Edinburgh?_

She swallows thickly, realising belatedly that she has reached the end of the close and is confronted by a neat white sign hanging at the door.

A. MALCOLM.

PRINTER AND BOOKSELLER.

 

She reaches out to touch the letters, tracing them delicately with her fingertips.

 

 A. Malcolm.

 

Alexander Malcolm.

 

Her father working under an assumed name.

 

Perhaps.

 

She has nothing to lose and yet still she hovers, her hand now raised to knock, still she waits for something, or someone to tell her that she has permission to enter.

 

_Someone needs to find him. And tell him. Tell him that it didn’t come to naught._

Taking two steps that feel like twenty, she shoves open the door and walks in.

 

* * *

 

Later she will tell herself that she should not have been surprised.

 

Later she will tell herself that he is just a man, her father, her true father, is just a man; not some seven foot tall, red haired God in a Mackenzie tartan kilt.

 

He is standing behind the counter, arms bent to the wood, palms flat and fingers splayed. Her eyes travel without encouragement to the two stiff fingers of his left hand, the joints sticking out and fused. _This is him. This is Alexander Malcolm, Jamie Fraser, her father._

She can hardly breathe and yet forces herself to take a breath, steadying herself. Even in the shadows of the doorway, she can make out the faint, musky whiff of his sweat, the way his eyes; a brilliant, endless blue that she feels she could fall into, widen slightly as he takes her in. The high, flat, Viking cheekbones contain a hardened face, the lines around nose and mouth deep, like gullies in wet clay.  His mouth seems to be on the edge of smiling as he continues to look and she finds herself staring at the small tendril of hair that has escaped the ribbon he has used to tie it back. His nose had been broken, she sees, the bridge thickened around a healed fracture.

 

_Her father, here.  Her father in the flesh, not just some ghostly figment of her mother’s tortured imagination._

 

‘Lass?’ The dark blue gaze is kind, but questioning.

 

‘You… You’re Jamie Fraser- aren’t you?’

 

She hardly knows what she’s saying. Only knows that she must say it, or be damned for an eternity of questioning.

 

His eyes harden at that, an almost unperceptibal movement, but one she notices all the same. The jaw tightens, the air itself seems to crackle with electricity. She cannot move. Those fateful words have now been spoken and she cannot take them back, cannot rephrase the question that has been silently torturing her since she first found herself fallen under the rowan tree.

He takes a tentative step towards her, eyes narrow triangles of brilliant blue.

 

Her feet feel frozen, lodged in wet clay, watching him.

 

His ears are winged, she sees with a thrill and a stab of regret, for she always hated her ears as a child.

 

‘I am,’ the question full of wariness. His arms are by his sides, tension running through the coarse wool of his waistcoat, rippling up the linen of his shirt.

 

‘Who asks?’

 

Her mouth is suddenly dry and the small voice in her head that has been so assertive goes suddenly frightened.

 

_Who asks?_

_Not Brianna Randall; descendant of his sworn enemy, the man who tormented him at Wentworth, who manipulated and twisted his being until he was a shadow, a shell of his former, blazing self?_

_Nor yet Brianna Fraser._

‘Lass?’ He asks again, voice softly insistent.

 

_State your business or be gone._

_It would be so easy! To turn and flee, push the door with the white sign firmly shut behind her and walk out of his life forever, without ever truly entering it._

_But she cannot do any of that. Not when she has come this far, not when she has so much to try and explain._

 

‘My name is Brianna’, she says, the vowels hard and flat, the Boston way. Her voice sounds strange, pitched too high for her own ears, echoing across the room.

 

His expression is one of careful blankness, yet still she sees something flicker in his eyes. Something that speaks of a distant, heart-breaking farewell, a whispered promise, tears streaking against cold skin. A dragonfly encased in amber, wrapped in a frayed and muck stained handkerchief. A ruby ring, slid onto a finger that shook as much as the one that gave it.

 

_Name him Brian, for my Father._

_The corbie’s song as they hung suspended in the steel grey sky above the battlefield, as he lay in the ditch with the body of Captain Johnathan Randall Esquire, of His Majesty’s Eighth Dragoons lying across him.  Randall’s head resting in his lap like a spent cannonball, black blood seeping through the scarlet wool of his captain’s coat._

‘I’m your daughter’, she says finally, her voices suddenly choked, the words wobbling.

 

He stands stock still for a moment and then flinches backward, as though an electric spark had arced between them and the allusion is suddenly teetering, perioulously on the brink of fracture.

 

_Daughter._

‘Daughter’, he repeats, his voice low and hoarse with shock. He steps around the counter then, for better to see her.

 

She nods, blinking back the tears that come anyway, his profile shining between rivers of salt.

 

He stares at her, taking in her height, her colouring, the slant and hue of her eyes that shared bond of kinship that she had longed for in her own time and yet never dared to truly hope that it would become a reality.

 

‘Yes’, she nods again, reaching up irritably to swipe at her eyes, cursing the volatility of her emotions.

 

‘Yes’, she says again and does not try to hide the tears, moving forward so they are now nose to nose, his profile blurring, yet still, amazingly, real.

 

‘Och, no, lassie! Dinnae weep!’ His face changes at the sight of her tears, the mask slipping, shattering in surprise and confusion. It makes him look younger, wariness giving way to genuine concern as he digs into the pocket of his breeks for a handkerchief.

 

She nods frantically in thanks and shakes her head, dabbing her eyes frantically with the square of cloth, not taking in the fact that he has caught her elbow and is moving her towards the window seat, his hands firm and strangely comforting on her shoulders as he presses her silently to sit.

 

‘Brianna’, he says again and she looks up startled through the tears. He says it quietly, with a prayer-like reverence, with an old Highland lilt, that accents the first syllable and allows the second to be said in barely a breath.

 

It sounds like music on his tongue, its’ proper tongue.

 

‘ _Bree-_ anah?’

 

He nods, a faint smile sparkling in his eyes, those beautiful, endless eyes reflected on her face.

 

He nods, reaching to grip her hand. She accepts, tentatively, feeling the whorls and callouses, the faded lines of cuts and bruises, the faint scar of the letter ‘J’ marked into his flesh by her mother’s hand.

 

‘I..’ She tries to speak, wanting desperately to say something, to try and begin to put into words what she’s done, but cannot find anything remotely adequate.

 

Instead the tears come and she finds him pulling her towards him, small words of comfort that she does not understand whispering themselves into her hair.

 

‘Dinna weep, _a leannan,_ ’ he murmurs, his voice low and soothing and she realises why Claire had said he had been so good around horses.

 

She moves in closer, feeling the weight of his arms tighten, the embrace wide and endless, the arms encircled around her stronger than she’d ever dreamed or dared to hope.

 

‘I.. I hadna thought of you as grown’, she hears him whisper and reaches up to grip his hand; wanting to hold him. ‘I hadna thought of you at all, apart from as a bairn.. A boy… A lad…’

 

She sits up at that and struggles round to face him, face suddenly burning beneath the salt tracks of her tears.

 

‘You… You thought I was a boy?’ She isn’t really surprised, her mother had told her and Roger as much, but still the musing stings her, as if her feminine status places her as lesser in his sight.

 

He nods, the blue eyes wide, bright with long, soot tipped lashes with fascination. She nods slowly, seeing something in the depths of his irises that in her rancour, she hadn’t been able to place before. Sees just how the hope of her existing, had been a flame that had kept him warm throughout the long and lonely years that stretched between them like a gulf.

 

‘Do you mind?’ She asks at last, the question tentative, her mouth twitching into an attempt at a smile.

 

‘Mind, _a leannan?_ Why should I mind?’ His mouth, wide and tapered, finally makes up its’ mind and he grins at her, the smile lighting his eyes fully like dappled light dancing through leaves.

 

He pulls her closer and she finds herself responding, burying her head into the crook of his shoulder, feeling warm and safe for the first time since her Mother had told her story of the stones.

 

‘Ye are here _mo chuisle, m’annsachd,’_ she hears him whisper into her hair, firm fingers running themselves up and down the fabric of her gown, catching in her hair. The fact that she doesn’t understand the Gaelic does not seem to matter.  She will learn, she says to herself, in time. 

 

‘That’s all that matters now.’

 

As she succumbs to the semi- darkness of a doze, she feels a faint smile play across her lips.

 

He was here, his arms safe and strong about her and finally, she sleeps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to read and review! Comments, questions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x


	4. Photographs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brianna shows her father some of her history in photographic form.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so, so much to everyone who has taken the time to read and review this! I am so glad that you're all enjoying it and I hope that this chapter lives up to your expectations.

She wakes at some indistinguishable time in the night to the sound of rough voices somewhere below her feet. One of them sounds distinctly French with a pronounced Parisian accent, the words too fast and animated for her sleep confused brain to follow.

 

She has vague memories of her father’s hand on her shoulder, the weight heavy and secure as the room began to swim in shades of darkness, her whole being aching with exhaustion.

_Her father._

_No, she could not call him that. It was too formal, too distant and stern for the comfort he had given her in the print shop._

_Not ‘Daddy’ either, for that belonged to Frank Randall. Frank Randall, who had always been Daddy to her and to use that now felt like the grossest betrayal of all that he had freely given her, a child not of his own blood._

 

She turns over on the rough mattress, suddenly too hot for the coarse wool blanket, kicking it down so that it puddles around her ankles.

 

He had carried her up to bed with ease, his scent enveloping her, a mixture of candlewax, ink and linen that made her suddenly feel so at home it was as if she had never left. His hand had traced the curve of her cheek, fingers catching around a stray tendril of hair

 

‘Sleep, lass. Mo chuisle. We’ll talk in the morning, a leannan. Sleep now _.’_

 

The voices are fainter now, drifting apart and the faint thud of the door complete with fainter ghosts of street traffic, tell her that whoever has come to the shop is leaving.

 

_She will ask him in the morning, but morning seems a long way away now and she feels as if she has travelled a thousand miles since she last fell asleep in the coach bumping its’ way along the road to Edinburgh._

From somewhere close by, she hears the creak of boots on the stairwell. A faint, flickering glow of a candle plays before her eyes and then a whiff of soft, male musk as he bends to her, fingers brushing back a lock of hair to kiss the small birthmark behind her ear.

 

‘Sleep, _m’annaschad,’_ she heard him whisper, voice low and husky, smelling slightly of very strong whisky.

 

She doesn’t feel him lift his hand, or move away; but the weight of it, the lines and bends of bones, the faint scars that rippled through the fabric of her shift linger for a long time afterwards.

 

* * *

 

 

When she next wakes, he is gone.

 

A faint, cool light filters through the shutters; dawn unlocking the morning in increments of pink and grey.

 

Low voices filter up from the print shop floor as she slowly rises, toes tingling as they touch the wooden floor.

 

Her gown is draped on the back of a chair, her shoes and stockings neatly placed below it. The cloak hangs on a row of pegs behind a curtain that blocks off a corner of the room, where she sees a couple of shirts, a coat and a long waistcoat in sober grey, a grey wool cloak and a spare pair of breeches.

 

There is no sign of a feminine presence anywhere and a breath that she hadn’t realised she’d been holding comes out in a rush. Clearly no one lived here but her father and for that, at least, she is grateful, if more for her mother’s sake than her own.

 

Her mother.

 

Claire.

 

The name rakes across her heart in a sudden burst of anguish.

 

_Where was she? What must she be thinking, back in Inverness at the Manse with Roger Wakefield, two hundred years in the future, with nothing to tell her that her daughter and the man whom she had believed to be dead were safe and united?_

Sudden, unbidden tears prick at the corners of her eyes and she brushes them away hastily.

 

Her mother would not want her to be sad, not now.

 

_I’ve found him for you, Mama,_ she thinks, willing the thought with all the courage she can muster. _I found him and he’s here, he’s safe!_

Collecting the cloak from its’ peg, she finds the reinforced pocket and rummages through, fingers frantic until they finally brush the small, rectangular, waterproof package that her Mother had done up with such care in Boston.

 

It weighs heavily in her hands as she stands there, willing her to open it, but she knows she can’t. She has seen its’ contents a thousand times, knows them by heart, knows too that they are for his eyes only.

 

Slowly, she moves across the room and places the package on the camp bed beside the window, her father’s bed with its’ pottery candlestick sitting on top of a chest of drawers and turns to dress.

 

The Jessica Gutenberg is heavier than she remembers, the hooks and eyes awkward, but she manages just in time to hear the familiar, heavy tread of Jamie’s boots on the staircase.

 

His fingers are slightly stained with ink and a smell of what she thinks is vellum comes off him.

 

Dark blue eyes light up when he sees her, his mouth twitching into a smile. She smiles back, open, thankful and takes the hand that he offers her without hesitation.

 

‘Did ye sleep well then, lass?’ His voice is soft and rich and she feels that she could never tire of it.

 

‘Yes’, her eyes follow his gaze to the package lying on his bed, suddenly full of memories of Frank wishing her a good morning as he laid the table for breakfast, bent over the stove as he made his morning bacon and eggs. ‘Thank you.’ She tries to say more, the doubt that had entered her as soon as she walked into the print shop below seizing her soul with an iron grip.

 

She could not call him ‘Jamie’, after all the trouble of finding him under an assumed alias, the use of his first name could endanger them both and the formidable dignity she senses from him forbids such casual use.

 

Whatever Jamie Fraser- Alexander Malcolm- is or was- he was not that; not to her.

 

He sees her hesitate, sees the slight flush rising through her cheekbones and recognises her trouble.

 

‘You can… call me Da’, he says at last and the slight pause makes her wonder how long his heart has ached to say those words. His voice is low and husky, his eyes dropping slightly, the grip on her hand loosening, shoulders caving inward.

 

Giving her a choice.

 

Her heart aches for him.

 

‘Da’, she repeats slowly, savouring the syllable.

 

‘Da’, she repeats again and he looks up, eyes shining, the corners of his mouth trembling slightly. ‘Is… Is that Gaelic?’

 

‘No. It’s…only simple,’ he tries to smile and she nods, moving towards the package on his bed.

 

‘And you, _a leannan?_ Is your life simple?’ She smiles at him, wondering how to put her twentieth century Boston upbringing into words that he would understand.

_Is your life simple?_

‘I can show you if you like’ she says, tightening her grip on his hand as he nods and leads him to the bed and the package.

 

‘Show?’ His voice is hoarse with disbelief as he watches her undo the waterproof wrapping and place the precious contents, her life and history in picture form, into his hands.

 

He takes them from her gingerly, his face a mask of unsurity. She nods in encouragement, watching him handle the stack of photographs as if they are a dangerous substance about to explode.

 

She has seen the first one many times.

 

It is a photo in black and white and shades of grey, taken by a kindly nurse a few hours after her birth. She watches his mouth move in silent words of shock as he takes in the slight slant to her eyes, visible even at a few hours old; big, knurled fingers tracing the fists clutching the blanket.

 

_A spyglass into another life, a life he had not witnessed and what must he be thinking?_

‘Oh, _mo chride_ ’, she hears him murmur, fingers going suddenly slack with shock.

 

Grabbing at the photographs before they tumble out of order to the floor, she gives them to him slowly, one at a time.

 

The next was one of her with her first birthday cake, lips cracked into a grin and smeared with pink and white icing, proudly showing four gapped teeth, waving a plush rabbit, who when she left, was a soft, frayed bundle, overhead.

 

‘Mama called it my victory cry’, she says, as he hands it back to her, fingers trembling, watching a smile crack at his lips.

 

The first skiing holiday up in Vermont, in the winter, padded out against the bitter cold.

 

‘Your… Your cheeks… They’re like apples _a leannan_..’ Jamie murmurs in wonder at the photograph, smiling at the wisps of copper hair escaping from the hood. She nods silently and slides forward the next photograph, the show photograph, done when she was four.

 

An incoherent sound comes from her father at the sight of her, prim and proper in a white pinafore, her hair combed to a bell shaped gleam. She has vague memories of that day, the soft tug of the hairbrush, the weight of her mother’s hand on her hair, the tang of the aerosol can, the flash of the camera bulb, the itch of the starched collar.

 

The next photograph comes slowly and the smile widens at it. ‘It’s called an omnibus’, she says reaching to trace the lines of her father’s hand when he looks up at her in silent question. ‘It was my first day at school and I…’ She bites her tongue, remembering Claire making the first set of a multitude of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, remembering the hug, Frank’s eyes shining with pride behind his glasses, the reassuring squeeze on her shoulder as she clambered up the steps to a bus full of noise and bustle.

 

‘I wanted to go alone’, she says, swallowing back the memories of Frank and her mother. He nodded in silent understanding and she continues passing through the tableau of her life.

 

The next one is in colour, she has forgotten that.

 

It rears out, bright and vibrant and she hears him gasp at the sight of her, aged eleven, arms wrapped around one of the many dogs of her childhood. She smiles back at her younger self, seeing the victorious red gleam of her hair, the slant of her eyes, a finer-boned copy of the man beside her, looking at her in wonder.

 

‘Ye have so much of your mother, lass’, he says at last, flickering towards one taken at the beach, splashing and laughing in the surf with a boy whom she had liked at the time called Rodney. Growing out of girlhood as she stood in a stream and laughed, holding a string of fish, and chopped wood for fire in the cabin they had rented from one of Frank’s relatives in the winter when she was sixteen and laughing at the camera.

 

_‘Braw lassie’,_ she hears him whisper, tears choking his voice, at the sight of the photographs; bright and vivid in the tawny autumn light.

 

And then, just last year, taken unawares as she sat in the living room back in Boston gazing at the moon, a few weeks before she had headed off to university.  

 

Silence laps between them, the gulf of her life that he had not witnessed rearing endlessly and she knows that he cannot bear it. She can’t either, but still she knows that it was the right thing to do. To tell him about her history, that what he sacrificed had in turn given her so much, and the gratitude she feels for that is beyond explaining.

 

‘Oh lass’, he says at last, finally lifting his eyes to her. They are very blue, vivid with memories and then she is in his arms, strong and solid and smelling of ink.

 

‘I… I had to bring them’, she says finally; words muffled thickly into his chest.

 

‘I know, I know _mo nighean ruaidh’,_ he murmurs, stroking her hair as she buries her face into his chest and makes a futile effort of not crying; the snapshots of her history spilling from her lap.

 

‘Will you teach me?’ She asks, a little while later, pulling herself out from the comfort of his chest.

 

‘The Gaelic?’ He asks, his face still white, eyes deep and blue with emotion. She nods. ‘Mo nighean ruaidh?’ A slight smile quivers at his lips at her awful American pronunciation.

 

‘It means _my red haired lass’_ , he says after a moment’s pause. ‘Your mother was… _is_ ,’ he swallows and she nods, urging him to go on. ‘Mo nighean donne. _My brown haired lass_.’

 

She cannot help but smile at that, testing the syllables on her tongue and he grins back at her. Simple, easy, she wonders why she ever doubted it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to read and review! Comments, suggestions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x


	5. Come Back To Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A surprise evening visitor sends Brianna and Jamie on a path that neither of them thought they would ever get to explore again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so, so much to everyone who has taken the time to read and review this! I am so glad that you're all enjoying it and I hope that this chapter lives up to your expectations.

 

‘ _Ciamar a tha tu, mo chridhe?’_

 

His voice is soft and encouragingly gentle as they sit at a table he has pulled up from the shop, overlooking the soft, wet lights of evening Edinburgh.

 

She swallows, her tongue still unsure of the Gaelic syllables.

 

‘ _Tha…’_ She stops and swallows, tongue feeling impossibly heavy. He nods, encouragement glistening in the depths of those endless eyes.

 

 _‘Tha mi gle mhaith, aithar,’_ she says finally, glancing up at him in sudden uncertainty. A small smile meets her, long fingers reaching out to cover her own. It was almost like being back in high school and attempting to speak the round, soft French vowels with a flat Boston accent, but if her pronunciation is somewhat off, he doesn’t seem to notice.

 

He is on the point of replying when a loud hammering on the door to the shop comes from below. It didn’t sound like knocking to Brianna, more like someone was using an iron headed hammer to demand access to the shop below.

 

‘Christ’, she hears her father say, followed by a stream of Gaelic that is too fast for her to follow.

 

‘What is it?’

 

 _Surely no one had followed her to the print shop? Surely no one had taken an interest in her, she’d been in Edinburgh for less than twenty-four hours! But then,_ she thinks, _she is not the usual traveller coming to the capital. Her height for one, she towers over most men in this period, as she had done back in Boston, gives her away, as does her mass of flaming hair, long since escaped from its pins, long straight nose and slanted eyes. Features not often seen on the streets of Edinburgh; features that are different, memorable even._

She cannot supress a shiver at the thought of being followed.

 

He doesn’t answer her, but gets up abruptly, shoving the table back with his hands.

 

 _‘_ Da?’ She can’t keep her voice from trembling on the syllable and bites her lip, watching him.

 

He is as tense as a cat about to pounce, the muscles of his arms bundled under the linen of his shirt, waiting for action. The slanted eyes, bright with pleasure only moments before are dark with concentration, a shadow passing over the broad, good natured face that frightens her a little.

 

‘Get your cloak, lass,’ he says at last, not looking at her. His voice is soft, yet there is a firmness in its undertone, the voice of a man who was used to being obeyed. Moving into the shadows to fetch her cloak, she sees him back towards the door, reaching for the dirk sheathed at his belt.

 

‘State your business!’ His voice rings out as he moves, feet silent against the wooden floorboards, towards the railing looking out over the shop.

 

‘Milord?’ A tall, slender figure dressed in black, steps out of the shadows. Moving carefully around Jamie, she sees a young, strikingly handsome man of about thirty, with a thick mop of black hair and dark, shining eyes that glittered in the lamplight.

 

 In the glow of the dancing, dipping light, she catches a glimpse of a gleaming hook that the man wears to replace his left hand.

 

‘Fergus, laddie! What’s amiss?’

 

 _Fergus._ Her heart is suddenly cold, facts spoken in the soft warmth of the Reverend’s study flooding her brain.

 

_Fergus, the French pickpocket whom her parents had hired in Paris to intercept letters to and from Charles Edward Stuart to try and stop the disaster that was the second Jacobite Rising._

_Fergus, who had stayed by her Father throughout all the long and lonely years spent in the cave behind Lallybroch; safe on his lands, but unable to take his rightful place as Laird for fear of endangering the estate by his presence as a traitor._

_Fergus, who had risked carrying a pot of ale to his master in the cave, taking the track high above the farm to a large whitish bolder that she remembers Roger saying was known to the locals as ‘Leap o’the Cask.’ Fergus, whose left hand; that small and deft and clever left hand had been sliced off by the rise of a sabre thrust, raised plaintively to the British Redcoats in supplication._

She is so caught up in her thoughts that she hardly hears what comes next. Hardly hears the gasp of shock, the bounding of feet up the stairs or feels the weight of hand and hook grip her hands, shaking them in disbelief.

 

Rapid French gives way to English and he backs away, staring at her.

 

‘ _Ma Cherie’,_ he whispers, dark eyes above the wide, mobile mouth darting to Jamie; who nods, eyes glistening. ‘You came back, as milord said you would’, his tone is almost awestruck, dark eyes wide with childish wonder as he looks up at her and Brianna can just about make out the eager boy who had populated Claire’s recounting like a pixie under the lines and bends of aristocratic manhood.

 

She nods mutely, unable to put into words anything that might make sense of her appearance, her eyes darting to the gleaming hook. Following her gaze, he throws a dispassionate glance at the instrument. ‘Oh, that.’ He shrugs in a gesture that tells Brianna that apart from the hand, he had not lost that much from his homeland. ‘The English.’ This is answered by a soft growl from her Father; standing still and silent in the shadows, watching the window. She glances to him but his face is a blank mask, only his eyes betraying any sign of internal anger.

 

‘What’s amiss Fergus?’ Jamie’s voice is a low growl, echoing deep in his throat.

 

‘Exicisemen _milord,_ at the tavern,’ his dark eyes grew darker still with meaning and her Father’s eyes widened with understanding.

 

‘Get downstairs, Fergus,’ he says with quiet authority, and Brianna realises quite suddenly what her Mother meant when she said just how loyal his men had been to him and what it meant to give such loyalty to a man like her Father.

 

‘Go and find Madame Jeanne, _mon fils,_ and guard the front. The usual signal and keep your pistol hidden unless there’s a need.’

 

_The usual signal?_

_Pistol?_

_What was her Father up to and why was this young Frenchman, her Father’s protégé notwithstanding, in on whatever it was?_

Before she can ask any of these questions however, she feels her father’s hand on her arm; slanted eyes suddenly very blue.

 

She feels the warm depths of his hands grip her own, the rigidity of the stiff fingers pushing into hers.

 

‘ _M’annaschad_ , follow Fergus to the brothel. He’ll ask for Madame Jeanne. She’ll keep you safe, ‘til I come back.’ A soft kiss to her cheek, lips lingering with soft male musk and suddenly she is in his arms, her fingers catching in his hair, her face buried in the crook of his shoulder.

 

‘Be safe, Da,’ she whispers, burying herself in his scent.

 

‘Come back. Come back to me’, the words are lost in between wool and linen, but she feels his shoulders shudder slightly and gently untangles herself.  As she steps back, accepting Fergus’s real hand as he pulls her down the stairs and into the night; she sees her father pull his cloak over his shoulders; face grim.

 

 ‘Come on milady, we haven’t got time,’ Fergus is pulling at her hand, willing her out into the cool wet air.

 

With a thunder of boots, they are gone.

 

* * *

 

 

The city seems to glow around them as they hurry down the cobbled slope of Leith Wynd, winding and dodging through closes onto the slope of the Royal Mile. Edinburgh’s evening light lies under a haze that threatens to thicken to rain, but there is no time to think of that now, as they dodge a crowd of urchins; palms pale and scabby as they beg for alms. Brianna tugs at the hood of her cloak, thankful for the warm weight of Fergus’s hand grasped in hers.

 

The brothel is hidden down a discreet close in just above the Kirk in the Canongate. She can just make out the eerie, bobbling glow of lanterns mounted at the entrance of Hollyrood Palace, on the street above and shivers slightly, remembering.

 

Remembering about the events that her Mother had told her had happened there, in those five victorious weeks before Charles pressed his Jacobite army south and then at Derby, retreated, on their death march up to Culloden Moor. Remembering the glow of the firelight playing across Claire’s glass face as she told them about the death of Jamie’s uncle, her paternal great uncle she realises, Dougal Mackenzie; dying in a sea of scarlet blood with her father’s dirk lodged in his throat.

 

Instintively, she glances at Fergus, but he does not look at her; hooked nose sharp in the shadows. A firm squeeze of her fingers though tells her that he knows what she is thinking, and for that she is glad.

 

The door opens to Fergus’s hammering knock with the hook and a crack of light appears. A pale face peers out into the night, lit by the flickering glow of candlelight

 

‘Oui?’ Her voice is sharp, her eyes wide and dark, face as fine boned as Fergus’s, cheekbones elegantly pronounced.

 

‘ _Bonsoir, madame_ Jeanne _’,_ Fergus murmurs, bowing and she smiles, a gesture which Brianna notices does not quite meet her eyes. ‘May I introduce my cousin, Mistress Malcolm?’

 

 _Malcolm._ Brianna held her breath, not looking at Fergus and yet inwardly thanking him. _The last thing she wanted was for her presence to lead to uncomfortable questions regarding Jamie._

 

Madame Jeanne’s mouth hangs open at this, eyes wide, displaying several decaying molars. Brianna forces a smile, trying not to look at the fact that the woman is wearing slightly too much rouge and powder and her gown, in a heavy silk, seems a little too rich for a brothel Madame. Something must have shown on her face as Fergus squeezes her hand in a silent gesture of reassurance.

 

‘ _It will be alright, ma soeur.’_

‘Cousin?’ Madame Jeanne’s small, dark eyes were roving between the pair of them like a torch, trying, Brianna knows, to find some hint of family resemblance.

 

She can feel sweat tugging at the back of her hands and bunches them in the folds of her gown, keeping her head lowered beneath the hood of her cloak.

 

‘My cousin requires some food and a place to sit that’s quiet,’ Fergus is saying, dark eyes dancing. ‘I will be back as soon as I can. _Bonsoir,_ Madame!’

 

She can’t speak, nor wants Fergus to leave; but the soft, long fingers are slipping away from hers and she is pulled into an embrace, hot breath thick on her ear.

 

‘Say nothing’, Fergus mouths, and she sees his eyes flick warning to Madame Jeanne, the beginnings of a charming smile flickering against his lips.

 

She nods but would be unable to speak even if she wanted to. She does not want Fergus to go, does not want to be left alone in this strange place with only her wits to guide her.

 

And then Fergus is leaving with a bow to Madame Jeanne, right hand firmly on his belt and she is being ushered up four flights of narrow, winding stairs, fear and anxiety making her suddenly ravenous.

 

‘Here is Mr Malcolm’s room, Mademoiselle,’ Madame Jeanne says quite suddenly, pushing open a door into a small, clean, altogether ordinary room, looking out onto the rolling street of the back alleyway.

 

It is plainly furnished with a stool, a simple bed and a chest of drawers, where a basin and ewer sit next to a clay candlestick with a beeswax candle, which Madame Jeanne lights with a taper. She breathes out, and makes her way to the stool, trying not to give into the lump of nerves still stuck in her throat.

 

_Why did her Father have a regular room in a brothel? For the Jamie Fraser that had been the protagonist of her Mother’s account, it sounded completely unthinkable, but now, twenty years later? She isn’t sure._

‘I will have a maid bring supper up directly, Mademoiselle,’ Madame Jeanne says from the doorway, her dark eyes narrowed. Brianna nods her silent thanks, but knows that the woman still does not trust her as she leaves the door open so that a chink of light spills in from the passage.

_Where was her Father? And Fergus? And, oh God, her Mother?_

Fumbling with the buckles on her cloak, she rummages in the reinforced pocket and finds the stack of photographs, slowly tracing their glossy outlines with trembling fingers.

 

 _I’ve found him and Fergus, Mama,_ she thinks, suddenly desperate, tracing the lines of the photograph of her as baby, the one that should have been taken by Jamie. _But now they’ve gone and I don’t know where and… I don’t know what to do Mama!_

Suddenly desperate for air, she tiptoes to the window and fumbles with the shutter latch, breathing in the cool, wet air from the docks, watching the small pinpricks of light and listening to the babble of voices moving up and down the street below.

 

A knock at the door breaks the sudden silence and a servingmaid with mouse brown hair, no more than twelve or thirteen, comes in with a tray of supper. Brianna tries to smile her thanks, but the girl keeps her eyes down and bobs a quick, awkward curtsey before laying supper and the fire with a quick and practiced hand.

 

‘Good e’en to ye’, she murmurs and flees.

 

Supper is a well peppered oyster stew and a stack of warm oatcakes with fresh, deep yellow butter. Brianna cannot thank her enough and falls to eating, trying not to think.

 

* * *

 

 

‘Lass? Brianna?’ She must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she knows is the comforting weight of a hand shaking her shoulder.

 

She comes to slowly, feeling the warmth of the oyster stew at her lips, the weight of the waterproof package, the crisp roundness of baroque Scottish pearls with their delicate gold roundals beneath her fingers…

 

_Scottish pearls._

_The pearls he had given her mother on their wedding night, twenty years before._

Still half asleep she scrabbles for them, desperate to return them to safety, but he gets there first.

 

Long fingers reach out and pluck at the pearls which come free before her eyes, dancing in the dying light.

 

And then she sees the paper. It’s rumpled after the journey, but still recognisably a page of Frank’s office paper from Boston and she stares at it for a moment that feels like a lifetime.

 

‘Lass?’

 

Jamie’s voice is hoarse as she finally looks up at him. His face is pale with shock and there is the beginning of a spectacular bruise covering one eye.

 

She can only nod her assent, feeling tears that she doesn’t know if she can shed prick at her eyelids. She remembers this paper. She knows suddenly that this is from her Mother, from Claire, written two hundred years in the future. Knows too that the swirl of indigo ink comes from one of Frank’s fountain pens; ink that swirled in a pair of cut glass ink stands, one in his study at Fury Street, the other at his office in Harvard University’s Eighteenth Century History department.

 

‘ _Oh Daddy,’_ she thinks. ‘ _Oh Mama! Oh Da, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!’_

 ‘Lass?’ Jamie’s voice seems to be coming from very far away. And suddenly she has gripped his hands, the large, calloused digits claw like, suddenly missing thumbs.

 

She sees just enough to read what is written there, before he collapses and she falls with him, knees buckling to the floor.

 

JAMIE.

 

His breath is suddenly ragged as he lunges for the letter, every movement bestial, lacking everything but brute, terrifying strength.

 

 _What must it mean to him,_ she thinks, curling in closer, covering herself, not willing to face him. _What must it mean to see his name, his own name written there, named by the woman whom he thought was lost for good?_

The last thing she hears before they are in each other’s arms again is a whispered, heart breaking plea, the words caught and broken within her hair.

 

‘ _Come back to me, mon nighean donn. Brown haired lass. Mo ghraidh. C… Come back.’_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to read and review! Comments, suggestions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x
> 
> Gaelic translations: ‘Ciamar a tha tu, mo chridhe?’ = how are you, darling?
> 
> ‘Tha mi gle mhaith, aithar' = I am well, Father


	6. The Past Comes Back to Haunt Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Returning to the print shop, Brianna and Jamie open Claire's letter and try to repress the ghosts that it awakens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so, so much to everyone who has taken the time to read and review this! I am so glad that you're all enjoying it and I hope that this chapter lives up to your expectations.

 

She doesn’t know how they make it back to the print shop.

 

She doesn’t hear herself send Fergus running back into the rain for a mug of honeyed whisky, or feel herself peel away her father’s sodden cloak and hang it beside hers, trying not to look at Jamie. Her voice is surprisingly steady as she murmurs nonsensically to him; guiding his shivering frame to the chair where only hours ago he had held her hands and prompted her forward with the Gailidgh; his face split with smiles.

 

It felt like a lifetime ago.

 

_‘I’m sorry Da! I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I…’_

He slumps in his seat, face white, eyes caved and distant, not seeing her.

 

The big, stiff fingers of his right hand tremble in a tattoo as they lie flat against the knife scarred wood. His mouth moves silently, face blanched white and ragged. She doesn’t know whether it is prayers or pleading and isn’t sure if she has a right to know at all.

 

 _‘He’s going into shock’,_ she realises; wishing Fergus would hurry up with the whisky, the only chance she had of increasing the decreased electrolytes in his bloodstream.

 

The letter lies between them, an exploded bomb whose effects had not been truly felt.

 

Her mother’s hand. The hand that for so long had signed her school reports, had written doctor’s notes, had flowed over page after page of medical exams that she vaguely remembered as a child. Remembered watching Claire bent over her books in the evenings as Frank brought her down for a goodnight kiss before bed; leaps out at her. Fragments of memory taunting him, screaming at her, curling up in the firm blue line of the J, the straightness of the I.

 

‘Da?’ Slowly, she reaches across the table and tries to take his hands, tracing the scars that she remembered Claire telling her and Roger about; the dusky evening warmth of the Manse suddenly chilled in a rush of revulsion as the events of Wentworth prison reared before her eyes. And still more scars to match those faint and faded stripes across his back; the lines and bends of healed burns and fractures, callouses, bruises that she had not witnessed lying dormant under his skin.

 

‘Da… Jamie…’ Her voice falters on his name, eyes flickering wildly to the shadows, as if a British soldier might spring out from the darkness.

 

He doesn’t look up that, but tightens his grip on her hands until the point of pain.

 

‘Not anymore’, he whispers still refusing to look at her. The words choke out in a broken whisper; his distant eyes fixed firmly on the scarred wood. ‘Not anymore.’

 

 

* * *

 

 

It is almost a relief when Fergus arrives with the whisky. His face is set and white, dark hair dripping as he steps into the shadowed light, dark eyes narrow with concern.

 

‘Nobody followed me’, he says in response to an unasked question, setting two horn mugs of whisky on the table and clutching a third. Slowly she passes a mug to Jamie, who ignores it, eyes painfully blank. There are ghosts there, Brianna thinks, ghosts behind a mask that she has no right to know, reaching out to grip his hand.

 

‘Da, you must drink. You’re going into shock...’ The persona of hospital matron, a persona that she had seen her mother encase herself in so many times, shatters as he finally lifts his gaze to hers.

 

The blue look is twisted with sorrow, his irises deep and endless as he takes her in, absorbing every vestige of her like a condemned man being led to the gallows.

 

‘You willnae leave me? Lass? Mo nighean ruaidh?’ It is a question asked with gut-wrenching simplicity, words laced with a hope that makes her heart ache as she tightens the grip on his hands.

 

From the shadows, she hears Fergus swallow audibly, but cannot look at him. The thick, knurled fingers in her palm shudder slightly, gesturing invisibly to the letter.

 

‘I won’t ever leave you, Da. Mama… Claire... She didn’t want to either…’ She swallows, feeling tears that she does not want to shed prick at the back of her eyelids and blinks rapidly. Seeing once more the circle of stones, their screaming, buzzing song rising eerily out of the morning mist. Sees once more, the dreadful parting, her parents’ shadows locked together against the scream of the stones, the tremble of hands slipping away.

 

‘ _Name him Brian, for my father.’_

 

‘Claire… Claire was afraid,’ she says finally, eyes resting on the letter, the pearls clutched in his free hand like a rosary.

 

‘I don’t know what she’s written, but…’

 

_She hadn’t even known that the letter had been written. Not then, not when she and Roger and her mother were still desperately trying to locate Jamie. Not when their days had been spent locked away in the study, trawling like earthworms through mound upon mound of documents, coming up to breathe pale and clammy, blinking in the dawn light._

He nods shakily, but doesn’t reply, eyes shining with unspoken grief. Grief and rage and bitter, bitter regret that she wishes she could banish, but knows that she cannot.

 

‘Do you want me to read it, milord?’

 

Consumed by the crumbling presence of her father, she hadn’t noticed Fergus step out of the shadows.

 

His voice is steady, dark eyes holding hers in a wordless exchange that she can only agree to.

 

The man at the table nods silently, eyes distant. Only the hands still gripped in Brianna’s give voice to his demons, the stiff, knurled fingers trembling and clenching in equal measure.

****

**_‘My own Jamie,_ **

****

**_I have sat at this table and stared at this paper, trying to put into words what I know must be said, for what feels like years. Part of me hopes that you will not have to read it, that I can explain everything to you in person. But if I can’t, it will be here, on paper._ **

****

**_I tried to put you behind me, put what we had behind me; for as much Brianna’s sake as my own. Perhaps she will be with you, our beautiful Brianna Ellen. She is the reason I stayed, the true reason. And yet she in her own headstrong way, is the reason that you are reading this. After a lot of hard work and grief, she came around to the knowledge that you are her true Father. You are the reason that she’s alive, and I hope that you never forget that.’_ **

****

Fergus breaks off at this, but Jamie does not move or speak. Only his eyes move, falling on Brianna, who nods silently. Only her father’s eyes seem alive, endless blue giving voice to a whirlwind of emotions that he cannot or will not put into words.

 

**_‘She was born on the 23 rd November in the year of Culloden and since the age of thirteen, she’s been taller than me. She carries it like a queen, Jamie- like, I expect, your mother did._ **

****

**_My love, I am afraid. Afraid of the people we were, the people we have become. To live a life with half a heart, to live a life chasing a ghost, as though all your ties to the earth are broken for twenty years, is no way to live and I curse myself daily for not looking for you sooner. But then, I look at Brianna, at the captivating copy she is of you in female form, and know that I could not come. If what Roger Wakefield told me is true, then I could not have come sooner, but for that I thank you._ **

****

**_I thank you for giving me a daughter who is determined and brilliant and fiercely selfless, always fighting for the side of the less fortunate- rather like you. She resembles you in so many ways- the way her ears have wings, the slant of her eyes, the fact that she smiles in her sleep. She was smiling when I went up to just now and looked so very like you, that my heart clenched at the thought that I might see you, when she would not.  l It was through her that we continued the search for you, her and Roger both. But still I feared for what I might find. I was afraid for you, for me, for Bree and what she might uncover about her mother, about us. But despite her fears, she keeps me strong. Even when all hope was lost and I knew you were gone, she, without realising perhaps. If you should feel hostile towards anyone, it should be me; not her._ **

****

**_I am still afraid, even now, knowing that you are alive. Afraid of the fact that we can never have what we had then, that too much could stand in the way of us ever finding true happiness with the people that we are now.  A part of me wishes that those fears could be banished but I know they cannot. I know that and you know that._ **

****

**_If she can, your daughter will tell you more. If she can, she will also give you the pearls that you gave me on our wedding night. Ellen’s pearls. I have worn them every day for the last twenty years, a final tribute to you._ **

****

**_Jamie, please know that I do not stay away for loss of love for you. The memory of you is my heart, my soul, the very essence of my being and for that alone, I cannot thank you enough. But my fear for the people that we have become does not go away with the sight of them. The fear is that if I return, when I return, we would be eternal strangers, unable to look past the barriers of our own grief and trauma, is too strong. I could not bear that._ **

****

**_My love, you are worth everything to me and more. The love of you, the memory of you, is forever etched in your ring, in the scar that you blessed me with before Culloden._ **

****

**_Be happy my love and know that I do not stay away to cause you pain. If I can, I will follow; soon._ **

****

**_With all my love always,_ **

****

**_Claire. ‘_ **

****

The silence that follows is dreadful in its intensity. Brianna feels as if she is falling, the earth opening in a great chasm beneath her feet. Her hands are trembling in her father’s grasp and each breath comes with an enormous amount of effort.

 

_Her mother’s words._

_Words written in the swirling blue ink of Frank Randall’s fountain pen, words filled with hope, despair, love and trust in equal measure and one that she does not know if she can live up to._

A warm weight on her shoulder alerts her to Fergus, the warn fingers resting lightly against her skin. She cannot look at him, cannot even look at Jamie hunched over, shoulders convulsed.

 

‘When?’ The question takes her unawares, the words spoken in a quiet snarl.

 

‘When, lass?’

 

_She doesn’t know._

_How can she know?_

_The woman who she had called Mama for twenty years, that woman had been a ghost of herself, a fragmented shell, a glass statuette with a crack splitting down her length; visible to all and yet, by some miracle, not fully broken._

From his corner, she sees Fergus move towards her Father, their eyes suddenly locked in a wordless, unreadable stare. Brianna can only watch as the Frenchman clicks his tongue in a censorious French way and nods to her, his dark eyes locked on Jamie.

She swallows, her throat working as if to rid itself of a trapped lump.

 

‘I…’ She stops and closes her eyes, trying to find some fragment of the courage that had flooded her veins in the pre-dawn light at Craigh na Dune. Trying to remember what it was that she had set out to do, trying to remember why she had taken her Mother’s place.

 

‘ _I can do it- go through, I mean. I know I can.’_

_But, she realises now, the fact that she could travel had not prepared her for what awaited her. For the crumpled shell of a man, clinging to the vestiges of a lost life._

_‘_ I don’t know’, she says at last, hating herself.

 

‘But she will come, Da. I know she will.’

 

From the corner, he nods slowly and Brianna can only hope that she is right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to read and review this! Comments, suggestions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x


	7. Back to the Future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In 1968 Roger Wakefield and Claire Beauchamp come to terms with Brianna's journey through the stones, whilst in 1766, Brianna tries to make amends with Jamie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to read and review this! I am so glad that you're all still enjoying it and I thank you for your patience- I promise you that there's not long to go now!

_Inverness, Scotland, November 1968_

Claire prowls around the manse’s living room, too restless to settle. Her shadow flickers in and out of the fading light, her feet tramping the faded carpet in a ritual of memory.

 

Roger watches her from the safety of his desk, feeling the weight of the exhaustion that has been tugging at his brain for months, envelop him in a thick, unshakeable cloak. It is an exhaustion that he has been fighting ever since Claire sat him and Brianna down and told them everything and now, one that he cannot seem to escape.

 

A lot of it hadn’t made sense then and still didn’t, as he sat amid the beginning of packing, ready, he hoped for the New Year. 

 

‘Do you think she’s made it? Made it back, I mean?’ Claire’s voice is almost shrill with worry; her face pale and taut with exhaustion. The wide, amber coloured eyes that showed so much are marred by bruising, glistening with unshed tears and his heart aches for her.

 

He nods and tries to smile, but his face feels too tight, the action forced and full of pretence.

 

‘I’m sure she has’, he murmurs, the words more of a prayer than an affirmation.

 

_She must have made it back, because the alternative was utterly unthinkable. To think of her trapped within that screaming, buzzing hell on the ancient fire feast of Beltane, never to return, or worse, to return to a time without the prospect of finding the potential of safety in James Fraser sent a bucket of ice cold water cascading down his spine._

‘And if she has? Oh… Bree!’ Claire is by the window looking out over the wild moorland expanse that had been his playground as a child. Her hands are knotted, clutching something he can’t see, her hair a blaze of darkness against the slowly setting sun. She is a silhouette of herself, Roger thinks, realising what Brianna had meant when she told him that living with Claire for twenty years had been like living with a ghost. A ghost clutching onto fragments, memories, the vain awareness of a great perhaps and yet…

 

And yet he was under no allusions about the destructive power held in the stone circle at Craigh na Dune. He had heard it- the roaring, buzzing whine of the cleft stone, felt the unbearably chaustrophic sense that he was being watched by thousands of souls trapped in limbo as he had stood with Brianna, red faced from cold and exertion and watched in silent horror as the body of Gillian Edgars’, Gaellis Duncan, he corrects himself, husband burnt.

 

‘It’s widest open at Beltane’, Claire was saying to whatever she saw in the slashed windows. ‘But… But I think…’

 

 _Samhain,_ Roger thinks, the knot of dread in his throat tightening. _And Brianna had gone through on the great fire feast of Beltane which meant that they had five months to wait._ The prospect filled him with an agonising dread, more for Claire than for himself.

 

_Another prospect would be the summer solstice, and he had no notion of how wide the veil that cut through time would be then, or whether Claire would even be able to travel. But that was still five months away and he knows that Claire cannot wait that long. He can’t either, he thinks ruefully, because God only knew what might happen to Brianna between now and then._

_‘She might find him’, a small voice that sounded a lot like hope, said in the back of his head._

_‘She might find him and tell him and be happy’, how he wished that were so! But from what the records and links tracing Jamie to Edinburgh had uncovered, the man whom Claire had said farewell to before the bloodbath of Culloden, was not the man who, under the name of Alexander Malcolm and Q.E.D, had published the article in 1765._

 

‘I should have gone, I...’ Claire turns back from the window. Deep grooves of worry are carved into her glass-like face, making her look twenty years older, eyes wide and red rimmed from lack of sleep.

 

Roger nods, a soft, noncommittal noise rumbling through his throat. _Yes, she should have, for that was what they had planned, that was what he and Brianna had expected, had attempted to shield themselves against. But here she has remained and her daughter, the daughter conceived amid the hell and smoke of the Rising, had gone. Had gone to try and find the father whom she had never known, the life that she had never witnessed._

 

The light from the window was fading rapidly and with well-practiced fingers, he turns the knop on the oil lamp at his desk. Despite the Manse being well equipped with electric light, since the Reverend’s death he preferred to work by lamp. It made the room with its’ years of history bound up in leather, ink and vellum, feel somewhat cosier, pulling out the names so that they felt like old friends sitting in the sagging green leather armchairs by a roaring fire amid a hum of talk and the stink of the Reverend’s tobacco.

 

‘Go up to bed, Claire,’ he says at last, watching her sink suddenly into the opposite chair, fingers shaking as they tug at the rug folded neatly on the back. ‘We’ll talk further in the morning.’  By the flickering glow of the lamplight, he watches her slowly move away to the shadows of the hallway and up the stairs to the guest bedroom. From the kitchen, he hears the soft click of Fiona locking the back door behind her and car tyres crunching on the gravel as she drove away for the night.

 

‘You better be something special, James Fraser,’ he murmurs under his breath, as he hears the soft tread of her feet upstairs mingled with the creak of the floorboards, turning back to his piles of second year History essays.

 

The words blur and dance before his eyes and he thinks of Brianna as he had last seen her, washed in the pre-dawn light before the stones.

Her hair had been loose, a flaming mane of auburn, roan, copper and cinnabar, her eyes creased into blue triangles of fear and excitement. Her face had been pale, but he still remembered the splattering of freckles that caressed her nose, spilling out onto her cheeks. 

She had looked like she might have stepped out of an illuminated manuscript, her presence fierce and glowing in the light and he had been struck then that Jamie Fraser, must have shared that presence too. Shared the same magnetic force of attraction that had drawn his men to him, had made them swear an oath to fight and die under the iron of his sword.

 

‘I don’t know who you were, mate’, he continues to the faded, musty twilight, thinking of the piles of documents that their search has uncovered. Thinking of the scrawling, faded ink of the signatures confirming the Deed of Sasine, the article against the Excise Act of 1764, written with the care and difficulty of a left-handed man forced to write with his right.

 

Concrete evidence, if there ever was such a thing.

 

 ‘But I hope to hell that you’ll take care of her. Care of them both, come to that. They owe you that much.’

 

* * *

 

_Edinburgh, Scotland, November 1766_

Brianna hardly sees her father over the next few days. His presence lingers in the shop; a faintly comforting whiff of dense, male musk, ink, whisky and vellum, a page of type left unfiled, a crust of stale bannock on a plate, a half drunk mug of ale, but of the man there is little sign.

 

Occasionally she will catch glimpses of him; a tall shadow framed in the doorway giving orders to Geordie, the narrow -faced assistant, but if he sees her, there is no acknowledgement.

 

‘He is grieving,’ Fergus tells her one evening in mid November, watching Jamie bent over the innards of the printing press, as he leant over the railing, scratching the bridge of his nose thoughtfully with the tip of his hook. They had returned from a much -needed trip to the dressmaker, the pale faced assistants wide eyed as they took in her height, the seamstress purse lipped and disapproving. The new gown was in navy blue, a softer, less garish alternative to the Jessica Gutenberg, now showing evident signs of wear and tear.

 

Brianna nods, heart clenching with shared emotion for Jamie. She had felt the same after Frank’s death, felt as if the world had opened beneath her feet and she was falling, almost allowing the dark chasm of grief and despair and denial to utterly overwhelm her.

 

Almost.

 

‘I know’, she says simply, watching the set of her father’s shoulders cave in, his vertebrae tightening, hunching over himself as if by doing so he would shut the world out completely. The tools shudder in his hands as he looks up into the dark belly of the shop, faint murmurs thick with tears and spoken in soft, broad, emotive Scots floating out into the evening air.

 

‘ _I… I was so afraid to lose ye, mo chiride, lose ye and the bairn. I havena loved anyone but you, mo ghraidh and the child… The child…  She... She..’_

 

How she wants to run down the stairs and take him into her arms and apologise, apologise again and again for her thoughtlessness, her sheer pig-headedness in thinking that news of Claire could be taken without a second thought.

 

‘Go to him, _ma Cherie’,_ Fergus says quietly.

 

‘You think?’ She replies, eyes flicking to meet his and then back to Jamie.

 

He nods, his remaining hand reaching out to grip hers; long, calloused fingers rubbing themselves reassuringly over her knuckles.

 

‘He will understand,’ he says simply and smiles at her raised brows.

 

_Will he? After everything that the letter conjured up? She isn’t sure._

But despite her fears, she goes.

 

‘Da?’

 

His face is sunken with anguish as he looks up.

 

‘Ye look so much like your mother _, a leannan_ , wi’ your hair all curled…’ The words come slowly, as if to reassure her. His eyes are very bright and very blue, red rimmed and hooded from lack of sleep.

 

A corner of his mouth twitches in the shadow of a smile at the sight of her, but she has no idea of how to reply.

 

Has no idea how to approach this man whose entire being was sunk into despair at the memory of a ghost now made flesh. A ghost now living and breathing in the ink, in the words written in the fateful letter, folded up in the breast pocket of his coat, along with the photographs.

 

‘It willnae be long now, my _Sassenach_ and then… And then I can explain everything…’ His voices tails off into a hoarse whisper, his eyes slipping shut as if to steel himself and with a shock, she begins to understand.

 

_Her mother hadn’t trusted him. Hadn’t trusted him to recognise the woman that she’d become, the life that she now led and hadn’t trusted herself to do the same for him in return._

_He was afraid._

_So was she._

_But with the letter, the door that had been shoved firmly shut and locked with a great, rusty key after the battle of Culloden, was now ajar. The mechanism in the lock had sprung free with a decisive click, but it would take more strength than she had, more strength than either of her parents had alone, to push the waiting door fully open._

‘Da?’ She asks again, moving slowly from the shadows.

 

‘Da… I… I’m sorry.’

 

There, she’d said it.

 

‘Sorry, lass?’ A sliver of blue appears beneath the long, auburn lashes, then widens as he takes her in.

 

She nods slowly, reaching out to grip his hand, to reassure him that she is there and not a fragment of his imagination.

 

‘I didn’t understand what it might mean, to know… I… I mean, I saw it with Mama, when she found the list of prisoners from Ardsmuir and then the parole at Helwater,’ she breaks off at the look on his face, seeing a flickering shadow of unspeakable memories playing dangerously close to the surface of his conscious. The stiff fingers tighten over the tool he is holding and she swallows, backtracking. He mutters something unintelligible in Gaelic, shaking his head furiously as if to expel water from his ears; face suddenly a mask of blank control. In the shadowed light from the window, his eyes are unblinking; stirrings of a beast she does not know rising behind his pupils.

 

‘Ye ken then?’ He asks, voice very quiet. From the top of the stairs, she hears a door click shut.

 

She nods, not wanting to break his gaze.

 

‘What do you know of it, lass? What do ye know of loss?’ His gaze is fixed on hers, yet his expression is unreadable, guarded, so unlike the shattered mask of a man who had cradled the photographs that she doesn’t know what to think of him.

 

‘Enough,’ she replies, thinking of Frank, of Roger, of Joe Abernathy and her life in Boston, of Claire, of loved ones that she never expected to see again.

 

‘Can you forgive me?’ Her voice is very small and quiet in the great expanse of the room, the words hanging for a moment before falling, shattering into splinters at her feet.

 

He tries to smile, closing the space between them to grip her hand, covering it with his own.

 

‘Aye’, he says after a long moment holding her gaze, his voice sounding a lot more like his own. ‘Aye _, a leannan,_ I think I can.’

 

 _It’s not fulfilment, but it is a start_ she thinks, as she allows herself to be enveloped by the strength and comfort of his embrace.

 

 _‘Caisteal Dhuni_ , _a nighean ruaidh’,_ she hears him murmur into her hair, his lips brushing against her scalp and she moves in closer, drinking in the scent of musk and ink and safety that she thought had been lost for good. ‘The Fraser war cry, lass. It will keep you safe ‘til your mother returns, as will I.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to read and review! 
> 
> Comments, suggestions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x


	8. The Stones Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claire Beauchamp and Roger Mackenzie pass through the stone circle at Craigh na Dune, both desperate to find their loved ones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for everyone who has taken the time to read and review this- the fact that you've stuck with it means the world to me!
> 
> This is it, part 1 of an indefinite number of chapters regarding the reunion- I hope that you all enjoy it!

 

_New Year’s Day, 1 st January 1969_

The buzzing hum had dug deep in his bones as he climbed the hill with Claire, the eerie chill penetrating his heart like the drone of bagpipes.

 

Dawn is creeping up with the New Year, bathing everything in stark, white light. The glen stretches out below their feet, a dark mystery still shrouded in morning mist and he remembers another time, racing up here with the smell of burning flesh and petrol assaulting his nostrils, his breath billowing thick and white in the night air.

 

A small tug at his elbow alerts him to Claire. She is standing stock still, face half hidden beneath the hood of her cloak. Her breath comes out in icy billows, her hands clasped together as if holding an invisible rosary.

 

_Brianna._

The name is an ache to his chest and he rubs at it, fingers catching on the round smoothness of his mother’s locket, taken for maternal luck and for the garnets. The garnets that he hoped would bring safe passage through the great perhaps towards wherever Brianna had gone.

 

_If it worked… If he could… Then…_

 

Brianna had gone, taking her mother’s place to find her father. He was sending Claire back to find her husband.

 

_Jesus, it still felt strange trying to reconcile the word to an eighteenth century Highlander in full Fraser tartan rather than Frank Randall, whom he remembers as a disjointed collection of starched collars, low brimmed dark felt hats, kind eyes and sad smiles, a whiff of the Reverend’s tabacco._

From the town below, the faint smell of the Hogmany bonfires rises to greet him, a rose of fire rising eerily through the morning mist. Shadows of stars still litter the sky, their light faint and fading, the last vestiges of night suspended in the arrival of the dawn. He wonders if Brianna is watching the fires as well, standing shoulder to shoulder with a shadowy, faceless figure on Calton Hill overlooking the smouldering ashes of a bonfire- two hundred years in the past.

 

_Brianna._

_The thought of her standing there makes him think of the small circle of silver that he had bought for her at the end of last summer, when they were in London and haggling with antique coin dealers. It had been a simple thing; finely worked silver that clasped just below her wrist._

_‘Je t’aime… un peu… beaucoup… passionnément… pas de tout.’_

_I love you... a little… a lot… passionatley… not at all._

_The circle of silver spinning round the fine, smooth skin of her wrist, skin that ached to be kissed over and over again._

_Would she still return his love when he found her?_

Beside him, Claire is quivering with anticipation, the stones eerie screaming becoming louder with every step they take. Intinctively and feeling like a fool, he gropes for her hand, feeling a childish want for something to hold onto, something to anchor him for these final moments in a world he knows.

 

She returns the gesture, fingers cold and solid in his palm, but does not look at him.

 

Together they stare up at the great cleft stone, the stone that Claire had fallen through all those years ago and changed their lives irreversibly, the stone that Brianna and Gaelis Duncan had passed through and now…

 

It is still bathed in shadow, the cool light of dawn just reaching the tip.

 

He tightens his grip on Claire’s hand; the buzzing, screaming wail of the circle consuming him, seeping into the marrow of his bones. _Brianna,_ the stones seem to say. _Mo ghriadh, my love. Wait for me!_

The sun is just reaching the tip, spilling the granite with a soft pink light and it is only then, her eyes burning with the reflection of the dawn, does Claire turn to look at him.

 

A trembling finger reaches out to touch his face in blessing, her voice small amid the wailing racket.

 

‘Thank you, Roger.’

 

He nods in reply, their joined hands tightening, his throat feeling thick and useless.

 

‘ _Slan leat, a charaid choir’,_ he replies softly, huskily. Together they take the final step and disappear. ‘Luck to you, dear friend.’

 

For a long time afterwards the still, clear air shimmers with the echoes of an unspoken name.

 

* * *

 

_Edinburgh, Scotland, 1767_

At first Brianna thinks that they’re a dream.

 

A harsh westerly wind catches at the hood of her cloak as she makes her way down the Water of Leith, clutching a basket full of fish and winter vegetables. It was market day, the streets a melee of people, a cacophany of voices echoing off the closes. She had pushed and shoved her way down the Royal Mile, having firmly refused Fergus’s offer of assistance.

 

She wanted to be alone, she had said. Wanted to understand Edinburgh by herself and even that had sent a dart of annoyance flash across Jamie’s eyes as he observed them from the bowels of the printing press. Annoyance mingled with a stab of regret flickering in the depths of his eyes. 

 

_She is still a stranger here._

_A stranger to this time, this place that is not her own._

_It is as if he knows that she must go back, back to a time that he does not understand and her heart aches for him. Aches for them both; for her, selfishly perhaps, losing her father, her true father that she has just found and for him, losing the daughter whose life he never had the chance to witness._

 

She sees them at a distance, pale figures lost and found again amid the crush of people.

 

 She does not want to believe that they are real and instinctively reaches for the weight of the pearls, now hidden in the reinforced pocket that she had transferred from the lime green gown to her cloak.

 

‘Mama’, the word is barely a breath on her lips as she pushes her way forward through the crowd, paying no heed to where she is going. ‘Mama!’

 

A step and another and then a third and she is in Claire’s arms, pulling her off her feet.

 

‘Bree! Oh…’

 

Claire’s voice sounds distinctly strangled as she gently puts her down, keeping her palms firmly on her Mother’s shoulders. The amber eyes that have haunted her dreams ever since she passed through the stones are glistening with moisture as she turns to stare at Roger.

 

He looks more haggard than she remembers, the Oxford don in jacket, shirt and tie no longer. His clothes are not quite ragged, but they hang off him and she can smell something that she thinks is alcohol reeking off him in waves.

 

Only his eyes seem alive as he gazes at her,  those bright, burning eyes with their slight slant to reflect her own that betrayed their shared Mackenzie kinship.

 

Claire instinctivly pulls her closer and she accepts, burying herself in the delights of her Mother’s scent, her eyes still fixed on Roger.

 

_Why did you come?_

_I had to,_ comes the unspoken reply that burns fiercly through him and she flinches at its’ intensity, the knowledge that they are strangers now suddenly too much to bear.

 

‘I found him’, her voice does not feel like her own.

 

Claire nods, the glass face splintering slightly, an jagged crack running down from eyes to mouth as she absorbs what she’s just heard.

 

‘You must come’, she says at last, reaching out the hand that is not curled under the basket to grip Roger’s, her fingers falling into the familar callouses as if she had never left.

 

* * *

 

 

It is only on the way back to the print shop does she realise the enormity of what she’s done.

 

Of what her actions will mean for Jamie, for Claire, for all of them and her heart goes suddenly cold with fear as they edge their way along Cairfax Close. The white sign at the entrance of the print shop bangs against the door in an eerie thudding motion and she can just make out the shadow of her father bent over the innards of the printing press.

 

‘Jamie,’ she hears Claire whisper, the name barely a breath as she turns to look at her. Her mother is white to the lips, eyes wide with love and longing.

 

Brianna nods and tries to smile, pushing open the door. Beside her Mother, Roger’s eyes are wide, darting from her to the figure now pulling himself to a standing position at the sound of the bell proclaming visitors.

 

‘Brianna, _mo chiride_? Is that you?’ He is holding one of the many small tools used in the working of the press, stripped down to his shirtsleeves. His face is tight, slanted eyes narrowed into vivid blue triangles of concentration.

 

‘Yes, Da. I…’ She swallows thickly, eyes darting to her Mother and Roger and back again.

 

 _Mackenzie,_ she thinks suddenly; seeing Roger’s eyes widen as Jamie straightens up to his full height. _Viking descendants, with long straight noses, slanted eyes and bloody stubborn  minds._

 

The resemblance is less pronounced in Roger, still clinging to the vesitges of the Oxford History don, but still there. Still there in the slanted green eyes, the green of wet seaweed and summer leaves, a glittering green that betrayed his kinship however distantly to the witch, Gaelis Duncan and Dougal Mackenzie.

 

With a start like an electric spark, she sees an echo of her father’s stillness in Roger. She has never even considered that they could be remotely alike; the history professor and the battle blooded Highland warrior- but at that moment it could have been as if they were day and night, fire and ice, each mirroring the other in small, impercetable ways.

 

Her father’s blue, unblinking stare is not for Roger.

 

It is fixed on Claire, the tool clutched in his hand clattering to the floor through fingers slack with shock. She sees his throat moving, swallowing wordlessly as he tries and fails to speak, sees her mother’s endless eyes brimming over with love. Sees her mother’s eyes drinking him in, absorbing every vestige of him and bites her lip firmly to stop the sob lodged in her throat from escaping.

 

‘You’re real’. His voice is barely a whisper, yet it seems to echo endlessly throughout the shop.

 

‘Yes’, she whispers and Brianna hears the tug of uncertinaty and her heart aches.

 

‘Sassenach…’ The name is savoured on his tongue, the syllables spoke with an almost reverent hush; the wide mouth blooming into a smile. Brianna wonders for upmost time how long he has wanted to say it, to proclaim the name of the woman he sacrificed so much to love.

 

And suddenly, as if gripped by some invisible fear that the other would disappear, they are in each other’s arms; the embrace fierce and hungry, desperate for the other’s touch. Jamie’s back is heaving with emotion, the coils of his shoulders visible through the linen of his shirt, his fingers locked in the mass of Claire’s curls.

 

‘Claire… _mo ghraidh… mo nighean don…’_ English rapidly descends to impenetrable, broken Gaelic and Brianna knows that the first part of her journey, the hardest part, is now complete.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to read and review! Comments, suggestions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x


	9. Will Ye Have Me?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the dark of early dawn, Claire and Jamie and Brianna and Roger come to terms with the one that they thought they had lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for everyone who has taken the time to read and review this- the fact that you've stuck with it means the world to me!

 

_Jamie and Claire_

 

He watches her sleep by the cool, pale pre-dawn light flickering at intermittent intervals through the shutters. The moon hangs in a patina of pink and gold, reflecting off the silk spun threads of her hair spilling out onto the pillow before him.

 

Threads of silver are knotted amid the dusky browns and auburns that he remembers, their dark brilliance faded in places to a lighter gold, an aching reminder of all the years that they have lost.

 

Reminding him that he has not seen her change, he has not seen her bear the scars of their seperation, as she has not seen his, his fingers running down the length of her arm to grip her hand. turning it palm upright to place a kiss on the faded letter ‘J’ carved at the base of her thumb.

 

She shifts at that, turning over in his arms, eyes flickering open. They were strangers eyes now, dark and brilliant pools of gold and yet ones that he has seen so many times he can recite their paths by memory.

 

‘You’re real,’ she breathes, reaching to hold him; the gesture firm and tender, a tug of pain echoing through the stiff fingers of his left hand.

 

‘So are you… Sassenach,’ the name comes reverently to his tongue, soft and solomn all at once.

 

It had been a restless night, filled with glances from ghosts. They had touched as strangers, her hands reaching up to cup his face, tracing the crooked knot of his nose, his curling round the softened lines of her cheeks.

 

Too tired and emotional to sleep, they lay awake, their bodies slowly moulding to the others  secrets. For a time he had been afraid that if he closed his eyes she would be lost to him, his limbs becoming acutely aware of every small twitch of her muscles, committing them to memory once more.

 

Her touch is gently tentative, a healer’s hands exploring him and he wonders how many times she had done this in her own time, exploring and consoling those in her care back to health.

 

Her fingers run their way down the length of his leg, fingers skimming the skin like moth wings beating against a lantern. By the faint light of early dawn, he sees the unspoken question, the fingers paused over the deep runnell of his scar.

 

‘Culloden’, he hears himself whisper; the word a rough scrape against his tongue.

 

From the shutter, a narrow blade of early sunlight knifes its way agaimst the scar, standing white and stark against the bronzed tint of his skin.

 

He feels her fingers tighten slightly as they trace the twisted skin, hears her intake of breath as they fall against the deep pulse of blood that runs there. His own reach up to move against her shift; floating against the gentle curve of her stomach, whispering his love to the scars that had borne their daughter.

 

‘The femoral artery’, she whispers, almost to herself. ‘Dear God, Jamie!’

 

 _‘Will ye have me still?’_ The thought is sudden, panicked as he watches her eyes widen in horror as they take in the twisting scar. ‘ _Even if it frightens, or sickens ye? Will ye have me for the man that I am?’_

 

‘Can you tell me?’ Her eyes are deep and wide with questions as she looks up at him, questions that he does not know if he has the answers to.

 

_Can he?_

_Can he possibly subject her to the horror, the death and futility of that day which they had worked so hard and sacrificed so much to prevent?_

‘No, _mo chride_ ’, he says at last,shaking the ghosts of memories, the fragments of screams and the roar of the British canon, the short, flat cracks echoing endlessly across the blood soaked moor, from his brain.

 

He remembers very little about the battle, but fragments still stand out.

 

_The  sickening slice of a bayonet, the throbbing pain that had dulled itself into a distinct lack of feeling from the hip onwards as he had lain in the mud, slowly coming back to himself._

_Waking in the icy cold with the weight of Black Jack Randall’s head rested against his abdomen._

_The ghostly screech of the corbies circling overhead, a dark storm of wings and beaks that blotted out all light._

_Murtagh’s grip slackening in his; the light of battle fading in the  dark eyes as he held his godfather, cradling the dying man’s head like a bairn new born._

_Flames rising before his eyes, his body chilled to the bone with fever as Ewan Cameron pressed a cup to his lips and helped him drink._

_The sickening scent of burning flesh echoing afresh with the screams of the dying, the smoke billowing in blackened pillers against the cool, grey dawn._

_Can he possibly subject her to that?_

‘No,’ he whispers again, reaching to grip her thigh, keeping her close. ‘I willnae tell you _mo Sorcha_. Not… Not yet anyway.’

 

She nods, eyes shining with memory.

 

_‘I’ll never leave you’, those eyes seem to say. ‘Not again.’_

 

From the other side of the curtain he hears Brianna mutter something in her sleep and Mackenzie’s low, rumbling reply. He does not know what to make of him, this man who shares his blood.

 

‘Who is he, Sassenach?’

 

He hears her swallow, a tug of emotion as she gathers her thoughts.

 

‘He’s a historian,’ she says at last and in the shafts of early morning light he sees her face cloud with memory, the amber eyes that he loves so much suddenly faraway. ‘Was a historian. I met him when he must have been… Six or seven?’

 

He nods, the first pieces of this strange new man falling slowly into place, reaching to grip her hand in reassurance.

 

‘He helped me track you to Edinburgh. And he loves Brianna. That’s why he’s here.’

 

_But does he know her? And does she know him?_

For he had seen the way that his daughter had looked at Mackenzie, her eyes wide with a fear that seemed alien to them. She had looked for all the world like a trapped hare; caught in a snare between her past and present, her future gaping onwards endlessly before her.

 

‘Will he stand by her, d’ye think?’ He reaches out a finger to touch her face, tracing the lines and bends of her cheeks, softened now with age, moving closer to kiss her gently.

 

_Will you?_

The question is unspoken, but he feels her stiffen and then relax, spirit softening into his arms.

 

She reaches to grip his left hand, fingers tracing the slight bolt of pain that echoes through the stiff fingers, tracing the memories of that endless, agonising night where his life had hung in the balance, caught at the end of a surgeon’s blade.

 

‘You know I will,’ she says, fingers reaching over to caress the knots in his shoulders, running down the threads of silver that ripped across his back.

 

‘And Roger…’ Her voice is quieter now, the words slow and thoughtful.

 

‘He made it through the stones. I haven’t told you a great deal about it because I can’t and I don’t think Brianna can either.’ The words are said in a tumbled rush, as if she must say it or explode and he grips her hand in reassurance.

 

_I know. I know mo Sorcha. I know._

 

_Even if he was not able to hear the stones, he remembers them-their shadows rising black and eerie through the pale, pre-dawn light of a thousand years ago. Remembers the way that Claire had shook under his grip, unable to tear her gaze from him as he begged her to leave, the weight of their unborn child, the child discovered too late pressed between them._

_‘Tomorrow I will die. This child… This child is all that will be left of me. Ever. I ask ye Claire, I beg ye, see it safe.’_

She is shaking, trembling from sudden cold and memory and he holds her tighter, pressing her against him.

 

‘Do you need me to say it?’ Her voice is very small, lost within his chest.

 

‘No,’ he says at last, pressing his lips to her hair reaching to cup her face, tracing the line from cheek to jaw with silent love. The question he cannot ask answers another that has been tearing at his heart ever since he took her to bed.

 

_‘Will ye still have me? Forsaking the man that you once knew? Will you have me now?’_

Instead it takes all that he has to whisper, ‘no. No, _mo ghraidh,_ ye dinna need to say it. Not if it causes ye pain.’

 

* * *

 

 

_Brianna and Roger_

 

Fraser had brought him a razor and hot water with a curt nod before they had retired to bed; too caught up in their own emotions to notice anything else.

 

She had watched him shave, her fingers slowly carding themselves through her hair before she plaited it for sleep. A strange, uneathral aura hangs over her, as if she had stepped through an illuminated maniusciript with the candlelight playing on the sharp rise of her cheekbones, dancing in the endless sky blue pools of her eyes.

 

It is only when they are abed does she ask the question that he’s been dreading.

 

‘Why did you come?’

 

She is propped up on one elbow, her voice a steady question despite the lateness of the hour. If he didn’t know any better, he would have sworn that it was Fraser, _her father,_ he corrects himself with a shiver, speaking.

 

‘You know why,’ he strives to keep his voice even.

 

_Because I love you, because I was afraid for you, because after spending all those months together I couldn’t just forget you, because.._

‘That’s no answer’, there is a ghost of a smile to her voice, caught in the corner of her lips.

 

‘Mama came back because she wanted to find my father’, Brianna’s voice is steady, eyes flicking to the curtained off partition where the low, reassuring rumble of Fraser’s voice is just audible.

 

‘Because I wanted… I want to give you happiness’, his eyes are suddenly full of the lost and angry girl whom he had seen in a whirlwind of fury after the Reverend’s wake, rounding on Claire in a blaze of fury.

 

‘Happiness?’ Her voice is soft bark of laughter, eyes suddenly overbright.

 

‘You… You have no idea what happiness means here!’ Her voice is a spat of venom, her eyes sharp and blue in the dying light that sets her hair aflame and he recoils, suddenly unsure where he stood.

 

‘I do!’ An unkown spurt of anger rises in his chest like steam in a pot, rising higher and higher until he has to choke it back, forcing it away.

 

‘I bloody well know what it means I’d lose!’ He reaches out to grip her hand in a placating gesture, but she flinches back as though burned, her eyes burning in a deep blue look that sends a shiver down his spine.

 

_Does she realise just how much she looks like her Father- like Jamie Fraser?_

‘And… And I don’t intend to- _really,_ Bree,’ he gets her hand at last, covering it with his own; tracing the lines of her fingers, the bends of her knuckles.

 

‘Tempora mutantur nos et mutatntur in illis’, she murmurs, staring at their joined hands. A hint of sadness that he can’t quite place tugs at the Latin and he realises with a start that she is quoting Frank Randall.

 

‘The times are changing and we with them?’ He tightens the grip on her hand as she tries to hold his gaze, the dark intensity of her eyes crumbling into broken emotion.

 

‘For… For so long after we found him, I tried to pretend that Jamie Fraser didn’t exist’, she says. ‘After Daddy- Frank, died, I thought I could never have a father- not like him.’ She casts a worried glance at the curtain partition that shielded their cramped quarters from those of her parents and swallows.

 

‘But now he’s here and you and Mama are here and I… I think I know what Mama felt like when she couldn’t go through… I think I know some of that fear… Fear that my father… My Fathers…’

 

‘This hasn’t got anything to do with either of your bloody fathers!’ His voice is louder, rougher than he intended it to be and she flinches back, a shadow that could be fear flying across her face.

 

‘You haven’t committed any sins,’ she whispers, eyes still fixed on their joined hands. ‘You..’

 

‘It doesn’t matter’, he intrerupts roughly, not caring if her parents hear him. _Let them hear him._

‘It doesn’t matter because I’m here. I’m _here,_ Brianna. I went through those bloody stones and I’m going to do my damndest to try and protect you from whatever this life, this… This place…’ He breaks off, shivering, thinking of the eerie wail at Craigh na Dune rising ghostlike through the New Year’s mist.

 

‘You do believe me- aye?’ His hands are on her shoulders now, the grip firm and unweilding.

 

‘I…’

 

‘Fraser loved-loves your mother more than life itself and Frank… He loved you as his own- you’ve told me as much yourself.’ A small, strangled noise escapes her lips at that and his heart twists at the sound of it but he does not release her.

 

‘I… I know but…’

 

‘But nothing. If they can do it and you believe they can, then by God, you must believe it of me.’ There was a pleading note in his voice that he suddenly detested, but it was too late to take the words back.

 

‘I am a man like them, Brianna and I can and I will love you in this time, whoever you are now.’ He feels her shoulders shift beneath his hands as her head rises, her breath warm and choked on his face.

 

The slanted Mackenzie eyes are swimming with unshed tears and he knows that she is thinking of her parents, of the long and lonely years of separation that ran like a gulf between them. 

 

‘We shouldn’t waste it, should we?’

 

A ghostly glimmer of a smile dances in the guttering, failing candlelight and his heart lifts to see it.

 

‘Will ye have me then?’ He lifts their still joined hands to kiss her knuckles, his lips soft against her skin. ‘Will ye have me and all that I am- all that we are?’ The weight of her hand beneath his has stopped trying to escape and she continues to hold his gaze.

 

She is blazing red and burnished gold, blinding ivory and roasted cinnabar in the failing light and he wants her. He wants to hold her, to love her, to protect her with a desire that went beyond flesh.

 

‘You said once that you loved me’, his voice is pitched low, but clear. ‘D’ye love me still?’

 

She reaches for him in reply, the gesture slow and careful.

 

‘Of course I do. There’s nothing else, is there?’

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to read and review! Comments, suggestions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x


	10. Explanations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the early morning of the following day, Jamie questions Roger on his motives for entering the eighteenth century.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to read and review this! Your support for this story is so gratefully received and I hope that you continue to enjoy it!

She is woken by the soft brush of her father’s fingers sweeping back the curl of her hair, the smell of dense musk and sweat lingering on the diamond shaped birthmark behind her ear .

 

Beside her Roger rolls over and kicks at the blanket, still deep in his dreams. His arms are wrapped around the pillow, the bareness of his chin a strange scrape to her touch.

 

‘Good morning, _m’annaschad_ ’, there is a smile hidden in his voice, locked somewhere behind her hair and she cannot help but smile too, one hand reaching over to fumble for his fingers.

 

His fingers smell of honey and strawdust, the hot stink of lovemaking caught at the tips and her heart lifts at the thought of her parents united.

 

‘Morning Da’, she whispers back, thinking of Frank and their morning breakfasts together when Claire was still at medical school; tired eyes and fumbling fingers, the hum of the coffee machine, the whirl of early morning Boston traffic on the road, the birdsong outside their window, nesting in the azaleas. The crackle of the radio, the scrape of cutlery against plates or the splash of milk into cereal.

 

How different does that morning routine seem now! From somewhere, she can smell baked bread and the tang of butter, her Mother’s voice soft as it moves about the room setting out pewter plates and mugs for breakfast.

 

Dark eyes crinkle down at her, a hint of a smile playing at his lips. They are endless eyes that she knows that she will never tire of seeing. Never tire of seeing the light that infuses them, the love for wife and daughter bright and burning in the depths of his pupils. He has ink on his fingers she sees now, dark liquid staining the skin around his cuticles, brushing back her hair again to kiss her as she pulls herself into a sitting position.

 

He smiles at her, the gesture wide and endless and leans forward to place a small kiss on the top of her head. ‘Come down when you’re ready lass.’

 

* * *

 

 

The front room of the shop is hushed, drenched in sun sharp light. Jamie is stood at the table, his elbows pressed to the wood, so that she could see the lines of his muscles through the linen of his shirt, a roll of paper and a tray of what she thinks are type slugs before him. They are  encased within the wide span of his hands, the fingers knurled and knotted and she has to swallow in order to stop herself staring at the stiff fingers of his left hand. She has seen them often enough, felt them against her skin and yet seeing them so starkly naked splayed against the bare, scarred wood of the table unnerves her.

 

His face is set, cold and clear like a saint’s. He looked like one too, a Christian martyr bathed in the shadowy stream of weak January sunlight that caught his hair and set it aflame like a halo.  Beside him Claire sets four horn mugs, pewter plates, a loaf of bread and a jar of honey on the table. Her cheeks are pinched red with cold and her hair is escaping its pins, blown into beautiful, chaotic disarray from the chill Edinburgh wind.

 

Brianna cannot help but feel her heart tear a little at this scene of family domesticity. It is a scene that had been played so often in her childhood and one that she had missed with gut aching acuteness after Frank’s death, but never with this level of warmth, never with Jamie’s eyes singing their contentment as he pulls back the chair to sit, reaching to catch her Mother’s hand, his thumb caressing the lines of her fingers with firm, soft strokes.

 

‘Da?’ Brianna pulls the chair up to face him, smiling her thanks to her mother who hands her a plate of bread and honey.

 

‘We’ll wait for yon mannie to come down, I think,’ her father’s voice is soft and faraway; ripples of uexplained tension catching at the words. It was a stark contrast to his presence in the room; a  bold, imposing force, head turned away from wife and daughter towards the stairs. A ripple of tension sings like stretched wire down his ear, tension that only seems to heighten as a loud hammering comes from outside the shop door.

 

A banging that is matched in time to the soft click of the upstairs door shutting and a crack of light echoing over the railing.

_Roger._

_Fergus._

 

Two figures that in a rational world should never meet and Brianna’s heart clenches in sudden pain at the thought of them- Fergus, the French nobleman adopted as a Scot and her father’s adopted son and Roger. Roger, the history professor who had stumbled on this purely by chance, not knowing that he too was connected in this well spun web of family connections, of whispers and uncertinaty as certinally as his eyes bear the self same slant as her father’s.

 

‘Come in Fergus!’ Her father’s voice catches on the name and Brianna cannot stop herself from stealing a glance at Claire. She was white to the lips, dark eyes huge as they move from door to stair and back again.

 

_What must she be thinking?_

 

_The Leap o’the Cask._

_The urchin with the shock of dark hair and quick fingers that Jamie had hired in Paris now grown into a man with a life that she had not witnessed, secrets that she was not privy to._

 

_The Dunbonnet legend that she had unearthed in May, all those months and years ago._

 

And now Roger is moving warily down the stairs, his eyes fixed on hers. Those eyes that should be blue but instead were a startling green with their slant as they move away, landing on the crack of the open door and the tall, slight figure slipping inside.

 

And her Mother is moving slowly from her place behind Jamie, her eyes fixed on the chiseled face with the wide, dark eyes and the hooked nose, mouth moving silently in words of wonder.

 

Fergus stands stock still in the shadows of the door, his expression one of blank wonder.

 

From the stairs, Roger has stopped too, eyes fixed on the newcomer.

 

There is something in his eyes that Brianna cannot read, but something that sends a shiver down her spine nevertheless.

 

‘Milady?’ The arched black brows rise as Fergus’s face grows paler still as he takes her Mother in, an outline of the grubby Paris urchin leaping through the fine lines and bends that lie under his skin.

 

‘Milady? Is it really you?’ The dark eyes dart to Jamie and then find her, the unspoken question burning in their pupils. Fergus’s voice is barely a whisper as in two strides he has crossed the room and flung himself to his knees in a gesture of devote protestation at her Mother’s feet.

 

‘Fergus?’ Claire’s voice comes out in a choked croak. ‘Is that really you? Let me see you!’ Eyes shimmering with tears, Fergus rises to his feet, head bowed before gathering Claire into a rib-cracking hug that audibly knocked the breath out of her- expelling  a short laugh from Jamie and dispelling the cloud-like tension for a sudden, blessed moment.

 

On the stairs, Roger’s face is a mask of blank control; seeing but not taking in the joyful reunion.

 

‘I… I thought I was seeing a ghost!’ Fergus had Claire at arms length now, trembling with excitement and emotion. They are like long lost comrades, drinking the other in, refusing to let the other out of their sight in case they should disappear. The dark eyes dart to Jamie, the mobile mouth splitting into a white toothed grin. ‘Is it really you then?’

 

Claire can only nod stepping back to let Fergus into the body of the shop. His eyes are filled with smiles as he grins at Brianna, who cannot help but smile back, her heart twisting somewhere in her chest. At some point, he will look up to the stairs, where only a few weeks ago they had stood shoulder to shoulder, leaning on the railing in quiet contemplation and see Roger.

 

At the same moment she will be forced to make a choice, one that her heart screams against and yet her head tells her firmly is the truth.

 

 _Not now,_ her heart cries as she watches the three men, each in their own separate worlds, each tied to her heart by different threads; all weaving and tangling into each other. _Please don’t let it be now!_

From the table she sees Jamie turn and nod to Roger to come down, the gesture quick and curt.

 

He comes slowly, the glass green eyes fixed on hers. She tries to smile up at him, but her mouth is tight, sweat pulling at the back of her hands as she balls them in the fabric of her gown. The pulse in the base of his neck is jumping a quick, odd rhythmn as he takes in his audience, standing self consciously in a borrowed waistcoat of her Father’s that is two sizes too big for him, linen stark and dark, close cut breeks.

 

From her corner she sees Fergus’s eyes narrow at the sight of him, dark eyes flicking to her and Claire and back again, a silent question blooming in his pupils.

 

_Who is he?_

Her father is standing now, offering his chair before the quires of paper and typing slugs to Roger, offering a mug of beer and a plate of bread in a gesture of famous Highland hospitality. His face is set in an expression of eerie calm, the broad-boned face a mask of self-control as he moves in a quiet, cat like fashion so that he is facing the younger man, eyes not leaving the green glass eyes with their slight Mackenzie slant. Roger’s eyes widen as he takes in the broad-boned face before him and then Brianna, the carved lines and bends echoed exactly in feminine form.

 

Unable to sit still any longer, she rises and moves round the table to stand beside him, but the weight of her father’s hand reaching to grip hers stops her in her tracks.

 

‘Be still, _a nighean’,_ he does not look at her, does not need to, his gaze still fixed on Roger.

 

In the sunlit shadows, she hears Claire’s sharp intake of breath, a prickle of dread catching at the nape of her neck and trickling down her spine in a stream of ice.

She has a choice now.

 

A choice like her Mother had when Jamie first sent her back to the standing stones at Craigh na Dune. A choice that still weighed heavily on the two rings that she wore- the simple gold ring given to her by Frank and the silver ring made from the key to Lallybroch with its interlace pattern.

 

_From F to C, with love. Always._

_Da mia basia mille…._

_If it comes to it, can she make the same choice?_

She is so caught up in her own anguish that she nearly doesn’t hear Jamie’s reply. His voice is soft, but even she can hear the slight notes of a threat lingering there and waits, heart caught in her throat.

 

‘Tell me why you are here.’

 

It’s a statement, not a question and Roger’s eyes narrow in response, calculating how much is safe to divulge in this strange, new place, how much to leave unsaid.

 

Behind her, she hears Claire push back the bench to stand.

 

‘I’ve come for Brianna,’ the statement is direct enough; direct, bold and foolish and she wishes she could take it back and stuff it away into oblivion before he has even finished.

 

The words hang for a moment, suspended in time and Roger licks his lips, shuddering out a great breath that makes his shoulders heave with effort.

 

‘Come…?’

 

That is a question and without having to see Jamie’s face, she knows explicably that something has changed. The tension that had enveloped the room has risen by several degrees as she watches Claire slowly circle the table to stand by her husband. She sees her Mother’s hand reach for Jamie’s shoulder, slowly rubbing at the knots and bends she found there.

 

‘I’ve come for Brianna’, Roger repeats, voice ringing with bravado.

 

‘Roger…’ The name feels like a sob on Brianna’s lips as she stands beside her Mother.

 

Jamie nods.

 

‘Ye’ve come for my daughter then,  _a caraaidh?_ To wed, ye mean?’

 

With what little Gaelic she has Brianna realises that the lack of the personal ‘mo’ is intentional. Despite their shared Mackenzie blood, her Father does not think of Roger as kin, not yet.

 

Roger nods, eyes shifting to Claire whose gaze is wide; honey coloured eyes round with shock.

 

 _He hadn’t told her,_ Brianna realises.

 

_In the time that they had spent trying to work a way back to the past, he hadn’t even mentioned it and instead nursed his desire quietly, without a thought to those that it might affect._

 

From his corner, Fergus shifts slightly into the light, dark eyes narrowed, his expression one of acute mistrust.

 

They are like a pack of wolves, Brianna thinks, unable to tear her gaze from Roger. A pack of wolves circling their prey until there is no chance of escape and the kill can be performed quickly.

 

Roger flinches slightly at the slight thud of the Frenchman’s footsteps, paling at the gleam of Fergus’ hook.

 

‘And what makes ye think that I’ll grant ye your wish?’ Jamie has drawn himself to his full height; looking down his long, straight, Fraser nose at Roger.

 

‘I…’ He swallows, the muscles in his throat working visibly to find words.

 

‘I’d choose your words carefully, _mon frère_ ,’ Fergus’s mouth is lit in a grim smile that sends a shiver down Brianna’s spine.

 

_Surely not._

‘Because of our kinship and… I… Well I.. I love her, dammit!’

 

The words come out in a tumbled rush but Jamie’s face remains expressionless.

 

‘Do ye now?’ The question is soft, almost whispered. ‘So ye think that because you loved her before, in your own time, you’ll love her here?’

 

It takes a moment for Roger to process the question and his answer before he nods.

 

‘Will ye provide for her then?’ Still the same soft voice now with a hint of scepticism in it as he takes in Roger’s leanly muscled frame; still clinging to the life of the historian and folksinger, but the stare breaks and Brianna holds the deep blue eyes, knowing there is more, there are a thousand things that her father has left unsaid. 

 

It makes her think of the wedding that Claire had described, a wedding in a dress collected from a brothel and borrowed Fraser tartan. A wedding whose vows were made permanent by the sting of Dougal Mackenzie’s dirk singing across the soft skin of her parents’ wrists, bubbles of scarlet blood bound in a strip of white linen, the soft cadences of the Gaelic wedding vows rising between them.

 

‘ _Is tu ‘o mo chuislean, is tu mo cnaimh de mo chmaimh._

_Is leatsa mo bhondaig, chum gum bi sinn ‘n ar n-aon,_

_Is leatsa m’aamam gus an criochaich ar soaghal,_

_Is tu fuil ‘o mo chuislean, is tu cnaimh de mo chamaimh.’_

_Will ye protect her, protect her body and soul, make her life your own?_

_Will ye risk life and limb and still cherish her?_

_Will ye love her for all that she is, for her past and her present and guard her all of her days?_

‘I’m not handy with tools- I don’t know the first thing about printing’, he casts a dubious glance at the printing press, standing like an elephant in the room and the typing slugs on the table- ‘but… I’ve got a strong back and I’m a quick learner. that do you?’

 

Brianna knows that it is not the answer that her father is seeking, but the one that he expects. Jamie nods in reply, but does not look at him, his eyes fixed on Brianna. From the shadows, Fergus lets out a low, merciless laugh.

 

She nods in return, biting her lip to stop herself from speaking what her heart says must be said.

 

‘And you, _mo leannan_?’ He sits back in his chair, twisting round to face her. The big, scarred hands reach out to grip hers, squeezing her fingers in a gesture of reassurance. His eyes are dark with concern, glinting blue and black, brows furrowed as he searches her face, trying to understand.

 

Brianna cannot answer him right away. It is all she can do not to throw herself into his lap and weep; weep away the anguished confusion that is tearing at her heart.

 

‘Will you have him?’ Jamie’s voice is soft with concern, one finger reaching up to tuck back an escaped tendril of hair curling past her eye. His fingers are soft and warm against her skin, warmth that she thought she would never feel again.

 

She swallows thickly, pressing their clasped hands.

 

‘Yes’, she whispers, unable to look at Roger, Fergus or her mother.

 

Her eyes are only for Jamie as she nods.

 

‘Yes’, she says again, biting down her fear.

 

‘Yes I’ll have him.’

 

Her father lets out a breath that feels like he has been holding the entirety of the wind in his lungs, a small, sad smile tugging at his lips as he turns back to face Roger. The younger man’s face lights up, boyish eagerness casting aside the grimness that lines his face for a moment.

 

‘Roger, son of Jeremiah’, Jamie’s voice is formal, eyes direct and very blue. Brianna wonders stupidly how he knows about Roger’s father, what Claire managed to tell him about the genealogy chart that exposed Roger as the seven times great grandson of the illegitimate son of Dougal Mackenzie and Gaellis Duncan. ‘You will stay with us, for a time, if it pleases ye. You will be handfast to my daughter for a year and a day.’ He breaks off at that, but the unsaid words ring out as clear as if they have been shouted from a hilltop.

 

_If ye stay._

‘After that,’ he pauses again and Brianna cannot supress a shiver at the sight of him glaring at his kin.

 

‘After that, we’ll talk.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to read and review!
> 
> Comments, suggestions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy xxx


	11. A Smuggler's Moon (Part I)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In a chance meeting with one of Jamie's mysterious patrons; Jamie, Claire, Brianna, Roger and Fergus are caught up in a brutal race against time and the British Authorities. 
> 
> (Part I)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much to everyone who has taken the time to read and review this- your feedback and support is gratefully and lovingly received and I can't thank you all enough for investing in this story, it means the world to me!
> 
> The next chapter is split into two parts due to length and dramatic tension purposes- please feel free to suspend any and all senses of disbelief for as long as it takes me to get part II up!

Roger’s chance to prove himself comes with a blustery, rain swept February; bringing chills and sea squalls to the Water of Leith, the gleam of the Firth of Forth a troubled silver scar in the distance.

 

Jamie is often out with Fergus during the day and comes back to the print shop late at night stinking of whisky and gunpowder, shaking his head as if to dispel some rogue thought from his mind, his face set in a grim mask that never seems to falter.

 

Pamphlets in various states of production are scattered over the big, scarred table in the front room of the shop, the ink still wet on an argument for the repeal of the latest Stamp Act- with an exhortion to civil opposition- by violence, if necessary. Watching Roger work the press, shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, face red with exertion, Brianna wonders what he must think of it. Whether he can see the irony in him printing the very material that had led them to Jamie Fraser, the very material that, in the warmth and comfort of the Manse’s study, he had labelled seditious.

 

There were five thousand pamphlets to be printed, her father told them in one of the few breaks over bannocks, soup and ale. They had broken their work for a bite to eat at the nearest tavern, The World’s End, the rooms dark, close and stinking of vomit and alcohol fumes; the crush of too many bodies pushed together on rough wooden benches almost suffocating. The World’s End tavern was held together by a distinctive combination of whisky, wine, stale sweat and salt, all mixed together to create a boiling pot of rivalries and feuds as the fishermen from up and down Fife and the Lothians mixed with the Edinburgh city dwellers, their voices and beliefs ringing out in a cacophonous clash of voices.

 

‘They’re a commission, ken,’ Jamie murmured, scanning the crowd to see if there was any interest being paid to them. There wasn’t, but Brianna still feels a shiver of apprehension curl down her spine, icy fingers of dread catching at her throat. Beside her Claire’s face is set, one arm reached across the table, hand clasped in Jamie’s, their twined fingers gripping each other’s. ‘For Tom Gage’, his eyebrows rise in Fergus’s direction, a dark, meaningful look filling his eyes.

 

‘They’ll be exchanged at Arbroath for smuggled liquor’, Fergus nods in understanding and in the flickering candlelight Brianna sees Roger’s eyes widen and his brows rise. _No doubt Jamie had kept that secret close to his chest and no wonder! It makes her heart grow cold just to think of it._

‘I’ve an arrangement with Jared and his captains’, her father says in reply to her unasked question, his eyes flicking to Claire who nods.

 

_Jared Fraser, Jamie’s elderly cousin on his father’s side who had sheltered her parents when they first landed in Paris, battered and broken from their ordeals in Wentworth Prison and L’Abbe de St Anne. Jared, who through his connections had been able to give her Father an audience with the Jacobite leaders, thus placing the first, dangerous piece of the Rising into play._

‘Jared? Is he still alive?’ Jamie nods, a small smile catching at his lips at the sight of Claire’s raised eyebrows.

 

Silence laps between them for a long moment, the ghosts of the people that they had been in those frightening first weeks in France, twenty years ago roaming free. Brianna can feel them and the sensation sends an involuntary shudder down her spine; as if small, quick footsteps have walked over her grave.

 

‘Jared and Tom Gage gave me the means to live, _mo nighean ruaidh,_ whether they knew so or no _.’_ The look that lights his eyes is very deep and blue, speaking of ghosts and memories that she had not been privy to. ‘They put a weapon into my hands again, and I think I shall not let it down.’

 

The room seems to grow closer, quieter as he says that, eyes fixed on Claire and Brianna. The intensity of the stare is almost unnerving, but snaps as he reaches for his coat, hung over the back of his chair, fumbling in the pocket where she knows that he keeps the photographs in the breast pocket, close to his heart.

 

Reaching out to grip her hand, he places the objects that he had taken from his pocket, their weight cool to touch, pressing her fingers over them in a closed fist. They are small, she thinks as her fingers run over them, tracing the incised ends, much worn from handling, chancing a glance up to meet Jamie’s eyes in question.

 

He nods silently, leaning back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head. His eyes are far away, the look distant and inward and she knows that he does not think of what must come, what surely has to come now that he has imparted that knowledge to her, but of what had come before.

 

Claire leans over her shoulder as she uncurls her fist, her amber eyes wide in the flickering light.

 

‘Q.E.D’, she whispers and Brianna thinks of the letter, thinks of the article that had set the flame alight once more, thinks of the roaring hell of the stone circle at Craigh na Dune and finally understands.

 

* * *

 

 

They sit for a long time afterwards, Brianna nursing the type slugs in her hands, her parents and Roger quiet and contemplative. Only Fergus seems on edge, dark eyes scanning the room endlessly, fingers tapping a restless tattoo on the stained wood.

 

‘Who are you at the moment Da?’ Watching Fergus, Brianna stole a look at her father. Dressed in sober stark, breeks and waistcoat with his hair pulled back and clubbed with ribbon, he looked for all intents and purposes like a respectable Edinburgh merchant of Alexander Malcolm, but here? In the At World’s Tavern? He could be anyone.

 

He smiles a little grimly at her, breaking a hunk of bannock and mopping at his soup bowl.

 

‘At the moment,’ he pauses, eyes doing a cursory sweep of the room. ‘I’m Sawney Malcolm, respectable printer and publisher.’ There is a twinkle in his eye as he says this and she tries to smile back, fighting down the sudden lump of fear that has lodged itself in her throat.

 

‘But,’ he pauses again, lowering his voice several octaves to an almost conspiratorial whisper so that Brianna, Roger and Claire lean forward to hear his next words. ‘At any moment, I may have to become Jamie Roy. Best be on ye’re guard, _mo chuisle.’_ Smiling at Claire, he raises his cup to her, a smile of surpassing sweetness gracing his lips over its rim. Brianna feels a shiver of delight pass through her Mother as she watches him.

 

‘If you’re Mr Malcolm, then I think the question is, who am I? Who is Brianna?’ The words come out a little breathless and Brianna steals a glance at her, taking in the brush of heat spread across her cheekbones, the shine in the large, amber coloured eyes.

 

Jamie swallows a little thickly before replying, the tips of his ears glowing pink in the candlelight. ‘You’re my wife, Sassenach.’ His left hand reaches across the table to retighten its’ grip on hers, the silver ring parting from its’ groove on her third finger, the hand rising to reach his knuckles. Claire lets out an involuntary moan at the sensation of his lips against her skin and Brianna cannot help but smile at the sight.

 

_This is what she had wanted when she said that she would risk everything she knew and held dear to find James Fraser. Her parents, her true parents united and whole and happy._

 

‘Always. You and Brianna- ye are blood of my blood, no matter who I may be.’ From the corner, Fergus breaks his watch of the tavern to splutter a laugh into his cup. A serving maid’s long, dark skirt brushes past her father’s back, hazel eyes set in a long, thin face holding Brianna’s for a moment. The eyes are wide with unashamed interest and Brianna looks away, seeking Roger, not wanting to encourage her. He is still there, sitting quietly in the shadows, taking the world in, his thoughts hidden behind the inky darkness of his pupils. Slowly rising from her bench, she moves behind her Mother to join him, pushing herself on the scrap of space still left on the bench.

 

‘Penny for your thoughts?’ His hands are still warm from his ale cup, the gleaming green eyes glowing in the flickering light.

 

‘Just thinking’, he replies, his voice a little gruff, a small smile tugging at his lips as he turns to face her.

 

‘About what?’ Reaching for his hand, she feels the scrape of the hardening skin, the indents and pressure points of callouses left from pen and press. His fingers close around hers and squeeze back in a silent gesture of reassurance.

 

‘I don’t know. About… About this. About how it is that we got here,’ he shivers and she knows that is not from cold. The memories of the stones wailing song still haunts him as it does her, still creeps into his dreams at night and makes him shudder against her, body curling up against whatever chases his dreams.

 

She nods and squeezes back, caressing his fingers, reassuring him that she understands. She understands because she has the same dreams, less frequent now, but still the same.

 

‘Milord?’

 

The blissful reverie is broken by Fergus, his voice low and urgent.

 

‘Milord, there’s a man in a green coat coming this way.’ He squints, trying to make out the figure amid the haze of smoke and flickering light. ‘He looks familiar although I… I think it may be someone with alliances to Sir Percival.’ This last name was dropped in a low whisper, Fergus quickly turning back in his seat to appear unconcerned.

 

‘Sir Percival. Are ye sure lad?’ Her father’s head snaps up from its meditations on Claire’s palm, and stands in one fluid motion, body suddenly taut, eyes narrowed as the shadow of the visitor falls upon the table.

 

From the glow of the candlelight, Brianna can see the newcomer is a gentleman in a dark green coat of a good cut, of about thirty-five. He is quietly dressed, but something about his presence makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

 

‘A good day to you, Mr Malcolm’, the visitor’s voice is low with a cut-glass English accent tugging at the syllables as he bows politely, eyes scanning the company. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Fergus stiffen, hand reaching for his pistol. She hopes fervrently that he will not have to use it. ‘I trust I do not intrude?’

 

‘You do’, her father’s voice is tight with measured calm as he straightens up to turn a cool, blue gaze on the newcomer. Claire looks up at him anxiously, their hands still clasped. ‘I think I do not know ye, sir?’

 

If he catches the distinct lack of hospitality, the visitor is gracious enough to excuse it. Instead, he bows again, eyes landing on Brianna. She sees them widen slightly as they take in her height and she lifts her chin, holding his gaze, daring him to say anything.

 

‘You must forgive me sir, but as of yet, I have not had the pleasure of your company’, his tone is deferential, but the tug of hostility is obvious. He wanted her father alone and Jamie, being Jamie, was not going to grant him his wish. Roger’s fingers tighten in hers for a moment as the cool, dark gaze sweeps round once more.

 

 _I am here,_ his fingers seem to say.

 

_I am here and we will figure this out, whatever comes of it. Together._

‘My master, who is unfortunately otherwise engaged at present, bade me greet you, and inquire whether you- and your companions- might be so agreeable as to take a little wine with him.’

 

The pause before the word ‘companions’ was barely noticeable but it seemed to echo across the table. Brianna sees her father’s back stiffen, the stiff fingers of his left hand drumming an unconscious tattoo on the scarred wood. She cannot see his face, but imagines the slanted eyes narrowed further into blue slits of concentration, trying to deduce what the newcomer was about.

 

‘My companions and I’, Jamie says with the same marked pause, ‘are otherwise engaged at present. Should your master wish to speak wi’ me-’?

 

‘Sir, I am merely a secretary,’ marked embarrassment blooming across his cheeks at the mention of his apparently lowly rank, that vanishes as soon as it appears. ‘Sir Percival Turner’, he breaks Jamie’s serpent gaze for a moment, eyes flicking worriedly to a small and elderly gentleman in a neat, plain wig leaning heavily on a well polished gold-knobbed walking stick, sitting the shadows of the main room in a little hollow with two other gentlemen. Brianna realises with a flush of horror that one of them is Mr Wallace, the lawyer whom she had refused a game of chess with during the coach ride to Edinburgh.

 

_Surely he wasn’t behind this?_

_Surely he hadn’t followed her all the way to Edinburgh and kept watch from the shadows for four long, cold months?_

But she is unable to finish the thought because the small, elderly gentleman is at her father’s elbow, a genuine, genial smile gracing the lined face. His head was level with Jamie’s breast pocket and his eyes were dark and beady, shining with happiness at the sight of the little group.

 

Roger’s hand tightens in hers.

 

‘You will pardon the minor discourtesy of my sending Watson to fetch you earlier, I am sure,’ his voice is soft and measured and only just betrays the wavering quiver of old age. ‘It is only that my wretched infirmity prevents rapid movement, I am afraid.’ Her father and Roger had risen at the sight of the visitor, offering his chair. Fergus seems to slip further into the shadows, dark eyes gleaming.

 

‘So you’ll join us, Sir Percival?’ His voice is light and questioning, his eyes throwing a meaningful look in Fergus’s direction, who nods and as quietly as a shadow, slips away.

 

‘Oh no, my dear fellow! No, indeed, I do not wish to intrude upon your new found happiness!’ He beams around at the company, eyes falling approvingly on Claire in a way that makes Brianna want to slap him. ‘I had no idea that you were married, my dear fellow!’

 

Jamie nods, biting his lip, moving round to stand by Claire, one hand resting on her shoulder as Sir Percival sinks into the proffered chair. ‘It’s a long story, and one that I willnae bother ye with the telling, not tonight.’

 

‘Well, that’s by the by’, his voice is elegantly patrician despite his years, but Brianna cannot help but feel that something is amiss. ‘But’, his voices dropping several octaves, ‘I do have something of delicate importance to impart to you, my dear fellow. In fact, I had a messenger go to your print shop but it appears that they have missed you or simply failed to appear.’ He dismisses this with a ‘c’est la vie’ gesture, but Brianna cannot help but see her Mother’s hand reach up and tighten on Jamie’s.

 

 _Or both,_ Brianna thinks, thinking it wise that Fergus has slipped away.

 

‘I would not advise a trip up the northern roads right now’, Percival continues. ‘Really I should not. The weather on the roads is quite inclement and with your- ahem- retinue-‘a gesture encompasses Roger and Brianna- ‘you would not wish to attract unwanted attention.’

 

Jamie nods and bends to sip his wine, his face a mask of blank composure. After a long moment, he nods.

 

‘I thank ye for your advice, Sir Percival’, his voice sounds as forced as the smile must be, Brianna thinks, wondering what he is truly thinking.

 

With a final nod and some assistance from the hovering, pink eared Watson, Sir Percival hobbles away and Jamie’s shoulders sag, leaning into Claire as his head drops into his hands, fingers raking through his hair.

 

Brushing back an escaped curl, Roger whispers to Brianna, ‘now what?’

 

* * *

 

 

‘We go to Mullins Cove. At first light’, Jamie says decisively as they make their way back to the Print Shop, winding and ducking their way through Leith Wynd and into Cairfax Close. Fergus has appeared at his elbow as if by magic, his face set and troubled.

 

‘The latest shipment has gone milord,’ he says at last and Jamie nods, face still dark in the shadows as they approach the print shop. Everything seems normal, the white sign greets them with its customary bang, the smells of ink and ale and vellum enveloping them all like a cloak. Stopping in the doorway, Brianna breathes in deeply, trying to expel the feelings of dread that their audience in the tavern have set curling in her gut. ‘And though it is true that we do not trust Sir Percival’, Fergus turns at this and nods to her, ‘what is the point of him telling you about the ambush at all?’

 

They are sitting at the table, Jamie leaning back with his hands clasped behind his head, eyes closed, Fergus standing by the cold fireplace, gazing into the black depths of the ashes. ‘Damned if I ken why, _mon fils.’_

 

‘But telling you that it's on the road north, that’s miles! There could be an ambush at any given stretch between here and Arbroath!’ Claire’s voice is fraught with worry, the unasked question quivering in the air between them.

 

_You don’t think it’s dangerous, do you?_

‘Sassenach’, Jamie is on his feet and guiding Claire to his chair, his hands clasped in hers, moving slowly up to brush a stray curl out of her eyes. ‘I ken fine well that it’ll be dangerous, so does Fergus. But the men ken to guard their tongues and I wouldna ask you to…’ He breaks off, eyes searching for Brianna. She comes slowly, eyes wide, reaching for him.

 

‘But if it should come to it, you’re to go to Lallybroch. Fergus will see ye safe, _mo nighean don._ I promise ye that’. A small kiss to Claire’s forehead, their clasped hands trembling.

 

‘I won’t leave you’, Brianna hears Claire whisper, the words fierce and trembling, lost in the linen of Jamie’s shirt. ‘Not again.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to read and review! Comments, suggestions, questions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x
> 
> P.S All dialogue that sounds remotely Diana Gabaldon-esque belongs strictly to the book.


	12. A Smuggler's Moon (Part II)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a hell-paced ride to Arbroath, Brianna watches the men that she loves slip into the shadows of smugglers. 
> 
> (Part II)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much to everyone who has taken the time to read and review this-your support and encouragement has been gratefully received and I can't thank you enough for sticking with this story, it means the world to me!

The ride north to Arbroath takes six days. The chill of the Scottish night enfolds them all in a fierce, damp embrace despite their cloaks and Brianna’s fingers never feel truly thawed.

 

Tumbled down stones litter the landscape, the burnt out remains of crofts and cottages a stark reminder in the eerie quiet of the moorland road of the once thriving community that had made the north road their home. Oftentimes, cairns or roughly carved wooden crosses mark spots at the side of the road and the sight of these small monuments, tiny fragments of civilisation against the vast wildness of the great glen make the hairs on the back of Brianna’s neck stand on end. The fact that a way of life that had been entrenched into the very bones of the land itself could be obliterated with such vehemence is something that she feels deeply both as an American and a Scot and the knowledge makes her heart weep.

 

They pick their way slowly northwards, moving at first light to skirt the roads lain down by General Wade, climbing higher and higher until they reached the Firth of Tay, reaching Balfour for much needed rest and sustenance on the morning of the sixth day. Ahead of them lies the great, glittering line that whispered out to the Highland glens, a great mystery encased in mist on the horizon. Despite every bone in her body aching and the surety that she will never be warm again, Brianna’s heart leaps at the sight of it. At the sight of Jamie gazing out onto the low, slung set of the heather covered hills that rose from the glen and then fell away into the far-off gleam of the North Sea.

 

‘Quite something isn’t it?’ Roger reins his horse up to meet hers; voice low, teeth chattering in the cold. Raising a hand to shield his eyes from the pale, white glare of the midday sun, he squints down at the glen. Nodding, Brianna turns to look at him, still unsure on his solid grey gelding. His hair is longer then he would ever dare to wear it in their own time, long and loose in a curl of deep brownish-black. He has grown into Jamie’s stark and breeks, the long days working the printing press tightening him, moulding him so that the last of the looseness that she remembers has vanished.

 

As Claire’s mount brushes past hers with a disgruntled whinny to join her father, she knows that Roger does not mean the view.  He means her parents, shoulder to shoulder, their horses’ tails swishing irritatedly at the flies in a wavering column of black and chestnut; looking for all the world like the people that they had been twenty years and a lifetime ago, riding at the head of the Fraser cohort of the Jacobite army.

 

Overhearing Roger, Jamie turns his horse and trots down to meet them, mouth set in a grim line. Brianna lifts her chin to meet his.

 

‘We’ll be at Arbroath by sunset tonight, if we hurry,’ he says without preamble, eyes scanning them with a practiced look. ‘There’s an inn’, his eyes shift to Brianna, wide and deep with sudden worry, ‘that I’ll pay for ye and your Mother to stay in _mo chuisle,_ whilst we’re gone.’

 

_‘What about you? Mama won’t leave you, you know she won’t.’_

He must have seen something shift in her gaze, because a small smile catches at the corner of his lips.

 

‘Once we’re done wi’ the business and the men have gone, we’ll make for the Highlands.’

 

_The Highlands._

_Lallybroch._

_Home._

_Her ancestral home._

The words hold a certain thrill to them, a small beacon of warmth kindling in the pit of her stomach.

It is a flame that kept her warm as they climbed higher up a road that was little more than a sheep track, the earth compact beneath the scree of pebbles that come away with the horses’ hooves, scurrying loose in their wake. The fine misty drizzle that she has become accustomed to has turned to driving sleet that seeps into her cloak and gown, drenching her face in a fine mask of moisture, making her teeth chatter in the silence. The sky is a thunderous dark, the sun completely obscured, the clouds thick and heavy with rain. A sea gale is rising from the cliffs, a howling wilderness slamming itself relentlessly into their path, the air stinging and sharp with salt.

 

 Reaching a frozen hand to brush back a soaked lock of hair out of her eyes, she can just make out the shadow of her father riding on ahead, the fiery crown of his hair plastered to his scalp, his back hunched up in his cloak against the elements. Claire and Roger are invisible in the dark, but she can hear the soft plod of a horses’ hooves somewhere to her left and hopes that they are not too far behind.

 

* * *

 

 

As predicted, they reach Arbroath when the sun is beginning to sink behind the small cluster of boats that make up Arbroath’s harbour, turning the horses’ heads inland to reach the nearest inn.

 

Her body aches as the reins slip from her grasp, her fingers feeling as if they have been plunged into a block of ice. The world looks like it’s drunk, swimming and titling alarmingly before she can make out the bobbling light of a moving lantern and the sound of boots flickering in and out of the darkness.

 

The footsteps are mixed with a chorus of low, urgent voices. She is too tired, too wet and too cold to pay them much heed, only latching onto her father’s voice coming from a great distance. ‘Brianna? _Mo nighean ruriadh?’_

_Yes, Da. Yes I’m here, but I’m cold and I’m wet and I…_

Strong arms lift her down with no sense of strain, her skirts coming free from the wet leather in a sodden sweep of relief. His usual musk of stale sweat and sawdust is mixed with the sweet smell of heather, bracken and bog myrtle mingled with the tang of leather and horse.

 

‘Lay your head lassie,’ she hears him whisper, voice soft despite the cold as his lips sweep cold over her birthmark.

 

Managing to open her eyes for a moment, she struggles to see him, his eyes wide with tiredness and concern flickering in and out of the shadows cast by the inn-keeper’s lamp. ‘Wake me when it’s time, Da.’

 

The words come slowly, haltingly as if she has forgotten how to speak. He nods, even though she knows that this was not his plan, adjusting his grip to hold her closer. From somewhere in the darkness, she thinks she can hear Roger, but can’t be sure.

 

‘I will, _mo chuisle._ Sleep now.’

 

* * *

 

 

She doesn’t know how long she’s asleep before she feels a hand shake her shoulder, a horn cup of ice cold water pressed her lips, slipping off the layers of sleep like rain from a duck’s back.

 

The room is dark and low ceilinged, slices of silver moonlight scattering off the beams. The fire in the grate had died down to nothing more than a glow and her father’s face is barely distinguishable above hers.

 

The empty warmth on the mattress tells her that her mother is already awake.

 

He doesn’t say anything but places a finger to his lips, rising silently from the bed. She had slept in her stays, there had been no time to pack a shift and the piercing salt-sweet coldness of the night air sends gooseflesh rippling through her limbs.

 

By the time she has fumbled with the clasp on her cloak and pulled on her boots, he is outside with Roger and her mother. They stand shoulder to shoulder at the cliff edge, looking out over the sea, cold and black in the hours before dawn. A full moon hangs over the sea, glittering and dancing behind the restless clouds. The wind is high, keeping the scatterings of trees and gorse bushes tucked away in the moor behind in constant motion. Brianna can feel Jamie’s eyes on her, their brightness now dark in thought as he assesses the sea.

 

His next words are fraught with worry. ‘Ye’ll stay here, _mo nighean ruraidh._ You’ll stay with your Mother.’ She can hear the worry in his voice, understanding that if mother was to take care of daughter, daughter was also to take care of mother.

 

‘Yes, Da’, she tries to keep her voice from shaking, trying to fight down the urge to fling herself at him and beg him not to go. Beg him not to take Roger and Fergus, three pieces of her heart into danger.

 

The rest of the men appear in a timely fashion, slipping like shadows to the rendezvous points as the clouds were breaking over the horizon. They are muffled shapes to Brianna, hunched, black and blotted against the chill night sky. There are no introductions and they say little in acknowledgement of her or Claire, merely taking in Roger’s presence alongside Jamie with a low chorus of unintelligible mutters and grunts.  

 

The hulking shadow of a mule drawn wagon appears suddenly from the gloom, rattling from the road into the salt sprayed grass. The oil lamps hung at either side of the driver’s seat are shuttered but still emit enough light for her to make out Fergus, a battered tricorn pulled low, a soiled necktie at his throat. Beside him, sits a small object that she can’t quite make out, her curiosity piqued further when she hears Jamie mutter something obscene in Gaelic at the sight of it. Roger stands on the fringes of the group, eyes widening as Fergus emerges from the bed of the wagon and thrusts an odd looking lantern into his hands, fitted with a pierced metal top and sliding metal slides.

 

Her mother pushes herself through the crowd and she follows, mindful of Jamie, and comes to stand beside Roger, who is beginning to look slightly ill at ease. Reaching for his free hand, she squeezes it, pressing her fingers over his in a gesture of reassurance. ‘Is that a dark lantern?’ The question comes out in a whisper, but feels like it’s been shouted across the sea.

 

He nods stiffly but is interrupted by the small object, who turns out to be a diminutive Chinese man dressed from head to toe in soiled blue silk. There is a wicked glint in his eyes and Brianna feels a shiver of misgiving pass down her spine, moving instinctively closer to Roger. Looking up at them both, the newcomer shakes his head before plucking the lantern deftly out of Roger’s grip, saying-‘Tsei-mi say so’ in a decisive fashion that does little to spread light on the situation.

 

‘Tsei – mi?’ Brianna mouths to Roger, who shrugs.

 

‘He means’, comes a level voice behind them, ‘that whoever’s holding the lantern is a bonny target, should we have visitors. Mr Willoughby,’ he pauses and in the flickering light, Brianna sees him give a curt bow to the Chinese man, who grins back wickedly, ‘kindly takes the risk of it, because he’s the smallest man among us. Both of you are tall enough to see against the sky. You’ll come wi’ me, if ye please.’ With one desperate look at Brianna, Jamie leads both men a little way away to the edge of the cliff. From her vantage point, she can see the surf purling in against the battered stretch of beach, its’ small pockets of sand lying ruffled amongst beds of seaweed, pebbles and juts of rock.

 

Not an easy climb for men carrying casks, or for men heavily armed coming in persuit.

 

The weight of a hand on her shoulder makes her jump and whip round to see the shadow of Claire, or rather feel the familiarity of her mother’s touch tighten.

 

‘Will they be alright?’ She cannot stop her voice from shaking as together they watch another dark figure approach her father and Roger looming out of the shadows.

 

‘Not here’, is the reply and Claire leads her away from the cliff edge, her grip firm and unyielding, as if she were a naughty child gone too close. They pick their way past the gorse bushes until Claire stops on a small promontory with a clear view over the water.

 

‘They won’t see us from here’, her mother’s voice is low and caught with worry as she pulls Brianna closer. The rock falls away into a shallow bowl beneath their feet, a broken cup filled with night black wine. Moon bright water spills from the broken edge where the sea hisses and cracks at the hard granite, slowly eroding it to crumbling rubble. Occasionally, she thinks she sees the flash of a buckle, the gleam of her father’s hair or Roger’s stark illuminated by the moon, a flash of starlight, picking out the swish of a coat, but for the most part the ten men gone below are invisible.

 

She sees it before she truly understands what she’s looking at. Sees the tiny pinprick of the ship’s hull on the edge of the horizon, its sails shining in the horizon. The French colours are just visible from their viewpoint and instinctively she reaches for Claire’s hand, wanting something to hold, to anchor her to reality. It has two masts, that much is clear, gliding slowly into the swirl of current off the cliff, standing off like a silent spectre, its presence as staid and as ominous as the scattered clouds above it.

 

Her mother is not following her gaze, but is instead looking down at the salt sprayed beach, through a gap where the rock face broke away into a tumble of boulders, falling away eerily into nothingness. Suddenly her grip on Brianna’s hand tightens, a startled increase of pressure and she looks down, heart in her mouth to see a tiny prickle of light letting out a low, long flash.

 

It is Mr Willoughby with the lantern, whose second call is answered at last by an answering flash from the ship. It is a lone, blue dot, looming eerily hanging from the mast, the ghostly light reflected in a pool of brilliance in the black water below. Sweat tugs at the back of her hands as dark shapes begin to scurry over the beach, the slap and splash of the surf against wet wood sounding painfully loud in the silence.

 

 _Bring them back,_ she prays, not caring which saint hears her cry. _Please. Please bring them back._

 

Before she can go any further, there is a shout from the beach below. A shout that is followed by a crack and a piercing shriek of pain and then… And then her father’s voice ringing out from the melee, raised high and rough in Gaelic carrying easily up to the cliffs.

 

‘ _’Eirirch ‘illean!’_ It is the shriek of the Highland warriors from long ago slicing suddenly through the night. ‘ _Suas am bearrach is teich!’_  They are words older than time itself, last heard amongst the misty dawn that had shrouded Culloden Moor and Brianna grips Claire’s hand tighter, pulling her away and yet rooting her to the spot, unshakeable waves of fear making it impossible to move. From somewhere in the dark chaos below, there comes a short, flat crack and then a tortured howl of pain that makes her heart grow cold.

 

_Roger._

 

Thundering footsteps from the cliff behind them do little to manage her fear. Instinctively she whirls around, hand suddenly alone only to have another grab her from behind. _Where was Claire?_

 

‘Let go!’ Jerking away, she brings her free arm across her body to plunge into the unprotected abdomen.

 

It is little more than a glancing blow, but the darkness makes whoever it is grunt in surprise and stumble backwards as she pulls herself free, looking wildly around for Claire.

 

‘Mama! Ma-‘’ Her voice is high and strangled in the silence and she is trying to call again when another set of hands grab her, one palm placed firmly over her mouth, hauling her round her in the dark.

 

‘Christ, lassie, ye’ll have the whole of Arbroath on us!’ Jamie’s voice is low and urgent in her ear. ‘It’s me. Now hold your wheesht, aye?’

 

She stills, her heart thundering somewhere in her ears. He is little more than darkness himself and she bites down the temptation to kick him in the testicles, something that Frank and her Mother had warned her against when she was sixteen.

 

She can still hear Frank’s voice in the dusky quiet of the sitting room at Fury Street, sitting in the sagging olive green winged back chair with its’ patched and faded velvet, all but rubbed onto the wood, toying with his enamel cigarette case.

 

_‘Vastly overrated, believe me. Men are particularly protective of that particular area-‘ he had broken off at a muffled laugh from Claire, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. In this memory, her mother was sat at the dining room table, a pile of notes and her trusted, dog-eared copy of Grey’s Anatomy open under a reading lamp._

_‘Particularly hard to do in heavy skirts, I must say. I’ve tried,’ Claire’s eyes had gleamed with memory as she had looked up from her notes and Frank had nodded, not phased in the slightest. Twenty years after the war had ended, there were still secrets that they kept locked away, memories that neither could or would ever have the right to know about._

_‘_ Where’s Mama? Where… Where’s…?’

 

She cannot stop her voice from shaking in the stillness of the night, the unspoken name hanging like a noose around her tongue.

 

Jamie pulls her tighter, his left hand clenching a fistful of her hair, his sudden stillness telling her all that she needs to know.

 

‘No’, she hears herself whisper, the word lost in the wool of his coat. Fierce, hot tears prick at the corners of her eyelids, but she does not have the strength to blink them back. ‘No’, she says again, more vehemently this time because the repetition means that it is not true, it simply cannot be true.

 

‘I left him with your Mother, lass.’ The words are wooden, not spoken for comfort as he pulls her from his grip, keeping a firm hold on her arm. She lets him, the world reeling in numb disbelief as he shouts into the cold, clear night.

 

‘MacLeod! Raeburn!’

 

‘Aye, Roy’, comes a slightly testy voice is a low, hoarse whisper from the gourse nearby. ‘Innes too and Meldrum. We didna see…’

 

Jamie stops the slowly straightening shapes with a glance and continues his role call, more dark shapes emerging from the bushes and trees in a slow parade of shuffles and low voiced curses.

 

‘… four, five, six, seven wi’ Fergus’, her father is counting under his breath and Brianna shivers, pulling her sodden cloak closer round her with numb fingers, eyes flickering to the winking stars thrown up against the velvet curtain of the sky.

 

‘Where are Hays and the Gordons? And Fergus?’

 

‘I saw Hays go intae the water’, one of the shapes volunteers. ‘Likely the Gordons and Kennedy went too and round the point. I didna hear anything as though they’d been taken but I didna… I didna see…’

 

He doesn’t finish because at that moment a figure comes scrambling up from the road, all but collapsing into the waiting group.

 

Jamie is on his knees in an instant, rolling the body over, which is gasping and spluttering like a landed fish, the dark, sodden cloak sprayed out behind it like an eagle’s wings.

 

Fumbling with the cloak clasp to peel it off, Jamie hauls the figure to its feet where it staggers for a moment, shaking its head and doubles over, retching seawater.

 

Jamie waits as Fergus blinks owlishly, his face an ashen mask.

 

‘Mackenzie, I left him on the beach _milord_ with _milady._ He…’ He ducks his head, the words that Brianna wishes that he would say but prays that he does not, choked in his throat.

 

In the wavering darkness, a flicker of something that she can’t read passes over her father’s face. After a long moment, he speaks.

 

‘Go to Lallybroch, Fergus.’ It’s a command and one that sends a spasm of dread down Brianna’s spine.

 

‘Milord!’ Even in the darkness, Brianna can hear the righteous indignation that stings the exclamation.

 

‘Do as you’re told, ye wee cretin and see my daughter safe!’

 

‘But milord, I must…’

 

‘Ye’ll do no such thing! The vehement anger that stings her father’s words are like a slap in the face as he rounds on Fergus, making some of the shapes around her recoil. If she could see his face, she is sure that Jamie is snarling, slanted eyes flashing fire.

 

_There is already enough blood on my hands, this night._

_I willnae sully it wi’ yours, mon fils. Nor yours either, mo nighean ruaidh._

From the collection of assembled men, she can hear mutterings and the impatient shuffle of feet. Clearly the smugglers were anxious to get away, to melt back into the heather and she does not blame them; her heart already crying out on the cold, salt swept beach below.

She barely hears what comes next, barely hears her father dismiss the men, pressing coin into the palms of those in need.

 

‘Come _ma cousine’_ , she shivers against the cold of Fergus’s hand on her shoulder as he turns her away from the cloud splattered sea. The ship has vanished into the dark of the horizon, the waves crashing against the rocks below fainter.

 

_Somewhere out on that beach amid the salt stained shingle are her Mother and Roger._

‘The horses are down the road wi’ that _petit canaille,_ Willoughby’. Despite his ordeal, Fergus’s voice is calm in the dark and she moves closer, shivering into the embrace. ‘We’ll be in the Highlands by dawn.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to read and review! Comments, suggestions, questions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x
> 
> P.S All dialogue that sounds remotely Diana Gabaldon-esque belongs strictly to the book.


	13. Lallybroch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Following Jamie's instructions, Brianna returns to Lallybroch with Fergus to find the family that she never knew she had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much to everyone who has taken the time to read and review this- your feedback and support is gratefully received and I can't thank you enough for sticking with this story!

They ride to Lallybroch in relative silence, each consumed by their own thoughts. Willoughby had slipped away, disappearing into the shadows with a nod to Fergus who had scowled back, not bothering to hide his dislike of the man.

 

‘Where will he go?’ Brianna cannot help but be glad to see the last of the small man bundled in his soiled blue silks, no matter how loyal he was to her father.

 

‘To Edinburgh I suspect,’ Fergus shrugs in a gesture that is perfectly French and rubs his eyes, blinking rapidly. The events at the cove are still raw to them both, rising before their eyes and screaming in their sleep.

 

_The weight of Jamie’s hand in her hair, his dreadful stillness telling her everything that she did not want to know._

_The piercing shriek that had ripped the night apart, the weight of her Mother’s hand vanishing into nothingness, Fergus spread-eagled on the ground, gasping like a fish._

Brianna cannot stop thinking and wishes that she could.

 

Wishes that she could erase the terrible shriek that had risen from the shore from her mind or the way that Jamie had held her, arms shaking, unable to tell her what she knows now must be true.

 

It is only when they clear the last high pass and have reined the horses in, does she realise that they have reached the last hill and are now looking down onto Lallybroch. Lallybroch with the farmhouse tucked into the valley, with the broch rising above it, glowering down over the house.

 

Home.

 

She has never seen it, has only her parents’ descriptions of it to guide her and yet she knows that this is the place. Can see it in the way that Fergus’s shoulders seem to sag in relief as if a great, invisible weight has been plucked from him and thrown into the abyss.

 

His eyes are gleaming as they turn to look at hers, his face flushed in the cool, February breeze. ‘You’re home now, _ma Cherie’,_ he says simply, gesturing widely down to the house.

 

‘Yes,’ she hears herself say, choking back sudden memories of Fury Street, of long heat drenched summers spent playing in the garden with friends and one of the many dogs that had populated her childhood hollowing out her breastbone.

_It had been at the end of such a summer when she was twelve. A long and lazy summer when she had clung stubbornly to each day, staying out until the sun was little more than a burning crescent on the horizon. Twelve and climbing trees, laughing at Claire following her around with her camera as the comforting weight of the dog had pressed against her, her arms wrapped around the wide, warm neck, breathing in the sweet musk mixed in with the warmth of tarmac, the clean, clear air of home as the shutter clicked._

_Had Frank been there?_ She doesn’t know.

 

_She can imagine him though, standing nonchantly in cotton shirt and trousers, dark eyes gleaming over a cigarette, just outside the French windows with their terracotta pots, one hand thrust deep in his pockets, smiling his approval._

_‘Well done, smudge.’_

She is so lost in her thoughts that she almost doesn’t hear Fergus’s horse throw up its head in a sharp whinny of greeting. Her horse repeats the call, throwing up his head so that she drops the reins, her mouth suddenly dry.

 

She hadn’t thought about who would meet them first.

 

_Would it be Ian, her father’s blood brother?_

_Or Jenny, his beloved sister, keeper of his heart and soul, whose very bones had kept Lallybroch alive in the desperate years after the Rising?_

A handsome young man on a smart bay horse is coming up behind them, so that the horses swing round to greet their new companion. He pulls up for a moment at the sight of them; Fergus, tall and dark against the midday sun, herself, rumpled and dusty with her gleaming hair tumbling loose down her back.

 

He comes on slowly, warily, and then at the sight of Fergus, nudges his horse into a trot with his heel, face splitting into a grin that is tinged with surprise as he sweeps off his hat to them.

 

He is young and looks slightly younger than Fergus. He has a pleasant, strong-looking face with the high Mackenzie cheekbones and soft brown eyes under a thick cap of curly, black hair.

 

‘Fergus! Fergus, _mo caraaidh_ , we didna expect ye for another week at least!’

 

Fergus grins at that, the expression broadening across his mobile mouth as the young man slaps him heartily on the shoulder in a gesture of fraternal goodwill and the questioning piece falls into place.

 

_Young Jamie._

_This young man with the feather dark hair is Jamie Murray, her father’s eldest nephew, who had inherited Lallybroch after her parents had signed the Deed of Sasine, dated a year before the bloodbath of Culloden._

 

Those eyes find hers slowly, the thick, dark brows raised as he takes her in.

 

‘Madame’, he says at last, voice full of questions that she isn’t sure that she can answer. ‘Might I assist ye?’

 

She smiles at him, eyes finding Fergus who nods encouragingly, his grin still cutting across his lips.

 

‘I…’ She swallows, feeling the same dry mouthed sensation of dread that she had felt standing in the print shop before her father, creeping into her chest.

 

 _This time is different,_ a small voice in her brain tells her.

 

Drawing herself up in the saddle to meet his gaze, she swallows.

 

‘I’m Brianna… Fraser.’ Even after all these months of saying it, it still sends a tingle of warmth into her heart that she can now use her father’s, her true father’s name without fear.

 

The shadow of wariness that has clouded his face at the sight of her fades somewhat, the look of baffled puzzlement doesn’t.

 

He nods cautiously, eyes darting to Fergus for confirmation.

 

‘Your servant, ma’am. Jamie Fraser Murray, of Broch Tuarach,’ the title that should belong to her father, to her Jamie, feels oddly formal on his lips, like a pair of shoes that he is still getting used to.

 

‘Pleased to meet you’, she says, feeling a grin creep across her lips. Leaning from her saddle and keeping a firm grip on the reins, she extends a hand to him, which he shakes, eyebrows still raised, searching her face. ‘I’m your cousin.’

 

The brows, if possible, go even higher at that, his expression changing in an instant from one of puzzled curiosity to open incredulity as he tries to find some form of family resemblance that would induce such a remark. From his saddle, Fergus smothers a laugh.

 

‘Jamie Fraser is my father.’ The words sound so simple and yet to say them now, after nearly a year of wondering, of wishing, of hating and not daring to even hope, sends a bubble of hope that bursts into emotion into her throat. Quick, hot tears prick at the corners of her eyelids and she bites her lip to stop it from trembling, fixing her eyes on the brown ones before her, softening in concern.

 

‘Ah, _a leannan,_ dinna weep!’ He fumbles in his pocket for a handkerchief which she accepts with an undignified sniff, dabbing furiously at her eyelids.

 

He takes the pause to look her over minutely, eyes wide with wonder. When she at last looks up at him again there is a wide, slow smile splitting his face.

 

‘Damned if it isn’t!’ He turns in his saddle to grin at Fergus who nods rapidly and then seizes her hand with both his own. His grip is hard and tight enough to squeeze the bones together and she matches it, the warmth from his skin spread luxuriously into her own.

 

‘Jesus!’ He says at last, the word ringing with laughter. ‘My mother will have kittens!’

 

* * *

 

 

Ellen Mackenzie’s rose briar is just coming into leaf as they walk up from the kailyard. They had stabled, fed and watered the horses and Brianna’s stomach is growling with hunger, the desire for food momentarily overcoming her anxiety of what awaits her.

 

Under the curling foliage, she can just make out the carved letters on the lintel over the door, the words carved with care into the weathered wood.

 

_Fraser, 1716._

 

She stops, gazing up at it and allowing the small thrill of hope and happiness that she has fought against for so long to settle in her stomach.

 

This is home.

 

Her true home.

 

‘Alright there, cousin?’ Jamie Murray turns to look back at her, dark eyes following hers to the sunwarm wood.

 

‘Fine,’ she nods, swallowing and automatically ducks her head to follow him into the house, her actions earning a knowing smile.

 

 ‘You’ve been sleeping in blackhouses then?’ There are soft crinkles at the corners of his eyes as he smiles at her, making him look older than twenty-four. From the inside of the house she hears a babble of voices, all raised in exclamation at Fergus’s entrance.

 

‘We’re mostly tall, save my mam and wee Kitty. Our grandsire built this for his wife who was a verra tall lady herself.’

 

_Ellen Mackenzie. Ellen Mackenzie with her height and the slanted cat eyes of a brilliant blue passed down to her son and granddaughter. Ellen Mackenzie who, according to Claire, who had been told the story on her wedding night to Jamie, frightened and wary in their night things as they sipped whisky in the chamber above the taproom, had run away with Brian McDubh, Black Brian Fraser. Ellen Mackenzie who had died in an ocean of birthing blood, choking away her life at the age of thirty-eight._

_Our grandsire._ The casual use, the automatic inclusion of her into this family makes her feel suddenly warm, despite the coolness of the hallway.

 

Claire and Frank had both been only children, as far as she knew. Frank Randall had had distant relatives but she had never met any of them and only rarely had they received cards at Christmas, the stained and faded postmarks telling of distant lives in remote countries, half a world away.

 

She had set out to find her father, find him and tell him that his sacrifice on the field at Culloden had not been in vain. She had not expected and had not been prepared to find a whole new family in the process.

 

Suddenly a door bangs open to her left and a small pack of children dash out, shrieking and laughing, looking over their shoulders in terrified delight. Brianna laughs with them, sidestepping and dodging their bodies, pushing them onward. They charge past like carriages on a runaway train and one of them, a small boy of about four or so, barrels his way headlong into young Jamie, catching him firmly around the legs.

 

‘Daddy! Daddy!’ The latter catches him expertly and hoists him into his arms, settling him against his shoulder where he sits in sudden silence, his laughter cut off by curiosity and stares in wide-eyed silence at Brianna.

 

‘Well then, mo mac! Is that the way ye should greet your cousin, to see ye dashin’ about like a chicken fair wild after corn?’ His voice is stern, but Brianna senses the smile behind it and cannot help but smile encouragingly at the child who giggles.

 

Catching Brianna’s smile, he grows suddenly shy and shakes his head, burying it in the warm crook of his father’s shoulder, which makes Jamie Murray laugh, shifting the boy further up his hip.

 

‘It’s alright _mo bhalaiach,’_ a long, calloused finger reaches out to trace the soft curve of the boy’s cheek.

 

Slowly, he raises his head to peep at her again, blue eyes wide with interest.

 

‘My eldest boy, Matthew’, Young Jamie says to Brianna with a rueful smile. Any further conversation however is stilled with a door further down the hallway swishing open and the sound of light footsteps on the boards of the hallway.

 

‘Aye, Jamie? Fergus said we had guest- ‘the soft, brisk voice dies suddenly and Brianna feels her throat close, hope and longing suffusing into a sudden, unnameable desire.

 

Jenny Murray is barely five feet tall and as lightly built as a sparrow. Her ebony black hair now streaked liberally with grey is pulled back into a bun and the lines that run from nose to mouth are momentarily slack with shock.

 

She stares at Brianna for a moment that feels like an eternity, her hands balled up in the fabric of her apron. She has the same slanted cat-eyes as Jamie, but they are somewhat softer, more grey than the sharp blades of blue that Brianna has inherited from her father. Beautiful as they are, they are made even more striking as Jenny Murray’s face has blanched as white as paper and she looks suddenly as if she is about to faint.

 

‘Mam?’ Setting his son down and shooing him away with a firm shove, Jamie Murray hurries towards his mother who has groped for the wall to steady herself.

 

‘Ye can’t,’ she says at last, ignoring Jamie, her voice very faint. ‘Ye can’t be.’

 

Brianna nods, smiling tentatively.

 

_I am and oh, please be happy! Please be happy I’m here!_

‘Jen? Jamie? What’s going on?’

 

A tall man with a long, work worn face and deep brown eyes comes out of the door that Jenny Murray had just closed. His eyes widen in surprised concern at the sight of Jenny and he makes to go to her, the stiff, awkward clunk of the wooden leg he wears echoing in the silence.

 

Jenny ignores him, eyes still fixed on Brianna, searching her face minutely.

 

‘You’re really his, then? ‘You’re truly Jamie’s lassie?’’ Jenny’s voice is barely a whisper and the tall, dark haired man who must be Ian, stops suddenly, eyes wide.

 

One hand reaches up to trace her cheek, feeling the high Mackenzie cheekbones then falls to seize her own. A soft, pink colour is flooding back into her face now, smarts of silver pricking at the corner of her eyes.

 

‘You’re truly Jamie’s lassie?’ The tall man moves closer as he repeats the question, a small, warm smile playing at his lips, setting the soft brown eyes alight.

 The rush of warmth that Brianna feels at those words makes her unable not to smile in reply. She catches the soft spicy smell of baking that is caught in the folds of Jenny Murray’s gown and something else, something denser, more earthbound and pungent that she can’t quite place before she is gathered into her aunt’s shaking embrace.

 

‘I never doubted him,’ she hears Jenny say in a choked and broken whisper, lost within her hair. ‘I never ever doubted for a minute, lass!’ She draws back, holding Brianna at arms- length to survey her better and Brianna cannot help but return the joyful beam of delight that lights up her aunt’s face.

 

‘Oh niece, I’m that glad! I’m that glad ye’ve come!’

 

* * *

 

 

‘Come through to the parlour cousin, and sit down. You’ll be wanting to, surely?’ Cousin Jamie’s voice is firm in her ear, the smell of horse and musk that she remembers vividly from her own Jamie ripe against her skin. His arm is around her, turning her with a nod to Jenny and Ian and urging her through another door off the hallway.

 

This room is high ceilinged and homely, with a fire in the grate and a rag rug over the stone floor. There is a small Oak wood table surrounded by hassocks.  A great mastiff lying by the fire lumbers to his feet with a ‘wuff’ of surprise at their entrance, ambling slowly over to Brianna to sniff out his welcome. Brianna bends and buries her face in the dog’s fur, fingers losing themselves in the welcome velvet softness of the large ears, feeling the cool wetness of the dog’s nose nuzzle against her skirts. The gaggle of children that had passed her in the hallway are all crowded round one of the armchairs, where a woman with curly hazel coloured hair and a soft smattering of freckles is reading to them, her face animated in the flickering firelight.

 

At the sound of their footsteps the woman stops abruptly and flings herself at Young Jamie, surprise and laughter blossoming through a stream of rapid Gaelic. Brianna thinks of her parents and the too-short time that Claire had spent at Lallybroch before Wentworth and the Rising, the thought sending a hollow pain through her breastbone.

 

‘Cousin Brianna, allow me to present my wife, Joan Murray’, she smiles in response and bobs a curtsey, taking in Joan’s wide eyes as she takes in Brianna’s height, the flaming mass of her hair.

 

‘ _Cousin?_ Why Jamie Murray, ye never said…’

 

‘Do I have to?’ Young Jamie grins at her. ‘Look at her, Joanie. Can’t ye see?’

 

‘I can see she’s a Mackenzie like yer mam and yer uncle but…’

 

_But why is she here?_

The unasked question rings out clear in the silence and pulling herself to her feet, Brianna feels helpless to prevent it.

 

‘Can ye tell us that, _a leannan?’_ It is the tall man with the soft brown eyes and the hobbled stride who speaks at last, moving slowly into the room. Brianna swallows at the sight of him, Ian Murray, her father’s best friend and blood brother. By the fire, the children have all gone quiet and round eyed, gazes flickering to each grown up in turn.

 

Ian eases himself onto a hassock, dark eyes kind and questioning as he motions her to sit beside him. As she does so, she sees Fergus emerge at last, as presentable as water, soap and a razor could make him, dark eyes gleaming. He nods to Ian, grins at Jamie, bows to Joan and Jenny and is about to move to her, when a boy of about seven or so with a mop of mouse brown hair, a snub nose that is covered with freckles and hazel eyes breaks the silence by barrelling his way into Fergus’s midriff with a cry of delight.

 

‘Oof!’ He staggers for a moment, catching the boy around the shoulders and tickling him. ‘And how are you, Henry? Did you miss me, _mon petit_ _démon_ _?’_

 

The boy laughs toothily at this and a flicker of a smile crosses Ian’s lips. He nods to Fergus who promptly swings Henry onto his shoulders and charges out to the joy of the other children who charge out after him, whooping and yelling like fiends.

 

 Ian’s smile grows wider in the quiet, one hand reaching over to find Brianna’s, his grip as secure as a sanctuary. At the sound of Ian’s voice, Jenny has reappeared with streaks of flour and gravy splattered down a faded apron. Brianna watches her move slowly through the room until she stands behind her husband, one hand resting lightly on his shoulder.  

 

Young Jamie and Joan watch on, expressions caught in curiosity.  Despite the kindness in their eyes, Brianna feels overwhelmed. Her fingers are thick and icy despite the warmth of Ian’s grasp and the weight of the pearls in her hand feel like boulders set to drag her down.  ‘

 

My name is Brianna,’ she says at last, eyes dancing to Jenny and then back to Ian.

 

‘Brianna’, Jenny murmurs, her eyes suddenly far away, the word tinged with something like regret. Ian tightens his grip on Brianna’s hand and she remembers how Jamie had done the same when she had first entered the print shop. 

 

_And where is he now? Oh God, did he ever make it away from Mullins Cove?_

 

‘I’m your Uncle Ian, lass. Welcome to ye.’  _Uncle. Aunt. Cousin.  A new-found family that she had never known she had._

 

Ian’s voice is soft and Brianna swallows back a thickening in her throat, unable to stop the sudden pricking of salt from catching at her eyes.  

 

Blinking rapidly, she reaches up to brush away at a thick strand of hair that has fallen into her face.  ‘I… My…’ Her voice is thick and heavy and she swallows, tries again, but finds that she can’t.

 

‘It’s alright _a leannan_ ’, she feels rather than sees the hand that touches her, smoothing the tumbled locks back from her face.  She swallows thickly then reaches into the pocket of her cloak and drops the necklace on the table.  Silence fills the room as securely as a cloak. The only sound comes from the soft hissing of the peat fire, burning low into embers at the hearth.

 

 It is Jenny who moves first.  Like a sleepwalker, she reaches out a finger and touches one of the pearls, glowing in the firelight, her eyes shining grey and gold as they rise to meet Brianna.

 

From his corner, she hears Young Jamie catch his breath. The necklace lies gleaming against the dark wood, her Mothers’ baroque pearls blazing in their singular irregularity.

 

 ‘Oh my,’ she says quietly, eyes shifting from Brianna to Ian, who nods in silent affirmation. ‘He really was right then.’ The words are spoken as much to herself as to anyone else. ‘He never forgot her.’  

 

‘Of course he didna’, Ian’s voice is soft, addressing both Jenny and Brianna. One broad, work-worn hand reaches out to cover Brianna’s own. ‘He never would.’

 

* * *

 

  She is woken at some indistinguishable point in the night by a loud thud outside her window and a loud hammering at the door.

 

She jolts awake, startled and thinking of Cairfax Close. Thinking of Fergus, Jamie, her mother, Roger…   _Roger._

 

The name is like a bolt to her heart and she is sitting up and fumbling for her cloak before she is truly awake.  

 

Grabbing the brass candlestick from the table, she lights it clumsily from the fire and pushes the window open. The air outside is cool and crisp, a slight breeze playing with the tangled leaves of the rose briar, whispering their night-time song softly against the glass. 

 

 There are stamps of horses’ hooves, a chorus of sleepy dogs barking and cries of surprise from the kailyard, the flickering light of candlesticks and oil lamps picking out the swing of Ian’s kilt as he hobbles his way from the house. Aunt Jenny is there too, a ragged tartan shawl thrown over her shift, her hair a long dark rope down her back.  

 

Pushing the window open further, Brianna almost drops her candle. It wobbles and she manages to catch it just in time, but not before the noise alerts her father. His face is drawn and haggard in the broken light, a spectacular bruise beginning to gather over his left eye. He staggers slightly as he stands there and Brianna’s gaze is drawn to the figure next to him, hunched over and limping, swaying on his feet.  

 

Roger.  

 

 _No, it couldn’t be._

 

_It simply couldn't._

 

And yet as her eyes grow more accustomed to the gloom, her heart leaps into her mouth and she has bite back a cry because it is. It is Roger, deathly pale and clutching his abdomen as he staggers against Jamie’s weight, almost falling into Uncle Ian and Young Jamie as they rush to help.  

 

Pulling herself out from the window, Brianna throws her blanket over her shoulders and rushes from the room, praying that she is not too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to read and review!
> 
> Comments, suggestions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x


	14. Ye Will Have Me, Always

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brianna takes Jamie aside and tries to come to terms with memories that she had thought had been long forgotten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to all those who have taken the time to read and review this- your feedback and support mean the world to me!

Along with the hearing about Frank’s death from Claire in a phone conversation on her second day of orientation at Harvard, Brianna will consider the next few hours firmly as the worst hours of her life.

 

Unable to stay still, she hovers in the parlour door, watching Claire, Jenny and Uncle Ian’s shadows move slowly about through eyes that itch with exhaustion. They are little more than dark spectres rising and falling through the flickering light of the beeswax candles, her Mother’s voice a low stream of commands that make her stomach curl as Claire tends to Roger’s wounds. A steady stink of alcohol and human sweat rises from the camp bed set up in the middle of the room, her mother’s shadow changing at intervals with that of Jenny.

 

‘… The exit wound has got a small hint of infection… There’s the pus, look…’ ‘…I’ll need clean cloths and… Yes… That alcohol will do…’ ‘I think the ball’s hit the bone… There Roger… Hold his head Jenny and help him bite the blanket, there’s a bit of bandage stuck and I’m going to get it loose…’

 

A grunting exhale of pain from the bed that makes her firmly bite her lip to stop the cry that has risen to her lips from escaping.

 

‘Go up to your bed, cousin’, Young Jamie murmurs in her ear, his voice rough with badly concealed exhaustion, but she ignores him, her eyes fixed on the figures in the room. Standing by the window, his head bowed, is Jamie, his lips moving silently, hands clenched around something that she can’t make out.

 

His profile rises dark and sharp-edged against the flickering lamplight that her Mother is working with, the presence looking so eerily like the grim reaper that Brianna bites back a sob. ‘I can’t’. Her voice is a whisper, for to speak any louder feels like a violation. Even in this quiet place where life and death hang suspended in balance, it sounded too loud. Young Jamie makes a noncommittal noise in his throat, one hand reaching to squeeze her shoulder in what could be comfort before disappearing into the hallway, his footsteps echoing lightly up the stairs.

 

Pulling the blanket that she had snatched from her bed tighter around her shoulders, she moves quickly into the room, making for Jamie.

 

Her mother doesn’t notice her as she skirts round the foot of the camp bed, her face set and hard in the flickering light, the mask of the army nurse firmly in place. She cannot look at Roger. Cannot bear to watch the rasping breaths pushing at his cheeks, making the bones stand out in stark relief. His eyes are closed, one squeezed painfully shut by the beginnings of a blood clotted bruise and as she becomes accustomed to the gloom, she can just make out the slow rise of his chest beneath stark and quilt, momentarily obscured by her mother rising over him.

 

Ian, sitting in the padded armchair, with his wooden leg stretched out on a hassock before him, nods to her; the dark, kind eyes flicking in a wordless gesture to Jamie.

 

_Go to him, lass._

 

She nods, tries to smile, trying to bite down the desperate lump of fear that is growing in her throat.

 

From the garden an owl hoots, the sound a ghostly echo against the soft breeze playing against the window. The sound sends a shiver down her spine, making her pull at the blanket unnecessarily, her fingers catching against the soft, waulked warmth of the wool.

 

His eyes are distant, deep and fathomless as she moves to him, betraying nothing and telling her everything that she does not want to know.

 

‘Da?’ The hand that she grips is cold, his knuckles pressing rigid against her palm. Slowly, she works to undo his fingers, prising them gently open one by one, wanting to hold him, wanting to reassure him but not knowing how. A wooden rosary, very much like the ones that she remembers looped through the nun’s belts at school is clasped between the index and third finger of his left hand, the edge of his index nail rubbing against the worn wood.

 

His eyes are deep and fathomless in the dark, the shadows hidden there suddenly vivid in the gloom. Shadows of L’Abbe St Anne, of Claire and Murtagh, of the sigean du sheathed in Willie Coulter’s stocking, of the cramped and stinking cell in Wentworth Prison, Jonathan Randall’s lavender-infused breath thick and heavy against his neck. Of a life, his life, clinging perilously in balance as he came back to himself amid the thrum of rain on Culloden Moor.

 

‘Da?’ She looks up at him hesitantly, his face a careful mask of blank control.

 

‘I need to talk to you.’

 

The words are said in a rush and she takes a breath, feeling them tumble and crash in the quiet.

 

‘Mm?’

 

Her grip on his hand tightens, feeling the round, worn beads of his rosary, remembering with a pang the many times that she has taken her own and prayed, tracing the decads with practiced fingers.

 

‘I…’ She swallows, her breath catching as her eyes dart back to the camp bed, to Claire now sat by Roger’s head, one hand pressed on a poultice, taking in the bowls of water stained red with blood and whisky, the ripped wads of cloth that look like they could be from a stark, crusted black in the flickering light.

 

The weight of her father's hands in hers tells her that he understands.

 

* * *

 

 

They walk in silence into the chill of the night. His strides are long and loping and he walks with all the ease of a disarmed warrior, confident in his senses as they make their way through the kailyard to the barn, where the soft shifting footsteps of sheep greet them. She shivers in the animal warmth, pulling her blanket closer over her shoulders.

 

Eager noses thrust their way into the folds of her gown, small, yellow eyes glowing in the lamplight hung by a hook set high in the ceiling.

 

The ram pushes himself forward and throws his head through the railings at Jamie who shoves him back with a practiced hand, muttering a mixture of curses and endearments in Gaelic.

 

Finding a hassock of hay pressed up against the wall of the barn, he sits and nods to her to do the same, reaching for her hands. The pressure of his palms feel rough and warm and endless, the lines and callouses clinging to the pungent earthiness held in the sheep’s wool.

 

‘Now, _mo bheanachd_ ’ his eyes are soft in the flickering shadows, the sense of humanity flooding back through them. Outside a squall of wind blown down from the hill howls against the beams, the lamplight guttering in the shadows.

 

‘What is it that ye wish to tell me?’

 

She swallows, wishing that it were full dark. It would be easier, much easier to bare her heart completely then.

 

‘I wanted to talk to you about… About Mama and… And Frank.’ She stops and swallows, suddenly dry mouthed, the spurt of courage that had filled her heart in the parlour utterly spent. But she is in far too deep to back out now and so she ploughs on regardless, clinging to his hands.

 

‘I… I was born in November 1948 in Boston… It… It doesn’t make any sense and… And Mama...’ She trails off desperately, finding the endless eyes now softening with concern. A small frown has appeared between his eyebrows, but he says nothing, merely presses her hand to let her continue.

 

She takes a breath and swallows hard. He doesn’t look shocked, merely curious and it is that curiosity that spurs her forward, recklessly plunging into the abyss of her past.

 

‘D-Daddy, well,’ her breath catches on a sob at the thought of Frank. ‘Well- it wasn’t now- it was before I knew you, before his death and Daddy- he and Mama-‘

 

Jamie raises an eyebrow at her, the grip on her hand tightening, his fingers curled against her own.

 

‘Be still a nighean, aye?’

 

She is only too glad to stop talking, to stop the terrifying torrent of words and memories from cascading forth, memories that she hasn’t thought of in years. Memories that she has bottled up for years and now, only now with the thoughts of Roger and her Mother, of him, have floated up to the surface of her physche like unwanted pieces of flotsam landing in the ocean surf.

 

_An early September evening in the kitchen in Boston when she must have been eight or nine, sitting at the kitchen table working through her English homework. Her parents had been working late, Claire at the hospital and Frank at the university, and wouldn’t be back until late._

 

_Sitting with one elbow resting on the table, lazily twisting a length of hair around her finger, the words dancing before her eyes, trying not to think. Trying not to think about the way that the girls had jeered at her, whispering ‘carrots’ whenever she was near, their cool, blue eyes and coffee tanned skin burning into her back. She had tried to ignore them, tried to hold her head high and brush off their silent, merciless taunts, but often found it was all she could do not to fly on them in a fury that she did not know how she had come to possess._

 

Now she knows.

 

_The click of the front door opening and the dog, the big inky black Newfoundland affectionately named Smoky rising to his feet and bounding to her father, laughing and letting her pen drop to the table, pushing her chair back and scrambling to greet him._

 

_She had run to the hallway then, hair flying, eyes laughing only to see his face change. It had been a subtle shift and potentially only a trick of the light, but she could see the way his eyes darkened as they took her in, a sudden shadow passing over the deep-set bones of her father’s face._

 

_‘Daddy! Daddy!’_

 

_But the shadow hadn’t gone away. Instead it had darkened, intensified into something that she didn’t understand and Smoky, sensing something was wrong began to bark madly, his large tail sweeping the hallway as he bounded about in agitation._

 

_‘Daddy, what is it? What’s… What’s wrong?’_

 

_Her voice had begun to tremble, watching him through suddenly blurred eyes. He had become a terrifying, distorted shape, moving towards her, catching her arm, twisting it upwards so that a sudden, unbearable pain shot through her wrist as she tried to twist away._

 

_‘Daddy, please! You’re hurting me!’_

 

_But try as she might to twist out of his grip, he wouldn’t let go. He had clung harder, fingers digging into the fine skin, tearing away the flesh, his eyes flashing a malice that she hadn’t known existed._

 

_‘_ _You’re not mine, are you?’ His voice had been low and terrifyingly quiet, whispering in her ear so that she can smell him; that strange, pungent mix of sweat and cologne, the tang of what could be drink but she isn’t sure._

 

_She never could be sure._

 

_‘Are you?’ Frank’s voice rising, dark eyes flashing dangerously, boring into her own bright blue ones which she cannot explain._

 

_‘Daddy, I…’ His fingers digging firmly into her wrist, smothering her pulse. She takes a wild step back, her foot catching against the wooden leg of the coffee table with the blue stained vase on it that had been given as a housewarming gift by one of Daddy’s colleage’s._

 

_‘You’re his, aren’t you?’ The question is a snarled hiss, dripping with loathing, paranoia deep in his eyes. ‘His, the Scottish bastard.’_

 

_What Scottish bastard?_

 

_‘I..’ She tries to take another step, but her foot twists with a shot of pain and his free hand is raised, crashing down and…_

 

‘Lass?’

 

The weight of Jamie’s hands in hers bring her slowly back, reeling, into the present. Into the soft smells of the grass-fed animals, the pungent tang of the hay, the soft male musk that clung to her father.

 

‘He… He didn’t mean to…’ Her voice is a whisper, wobbling on the verge of tears. She can feel them, sharp shards of salt pricking painfully at the corners of her eyelids, running freely down to her cheeks.

 

‘Come now, _mo chuisle_ ,’ his voice is low and soft, thick fingers running through her hair in long, slow strokes, his voice slowly lost to her in her sobs.

 

He had a sure and gentle touch, picked up no doubt from years of combing out horses’ tails. The Gaelic is a soothing descant, whispering his love to her. She doesn’t want it stop and yet knows with a sickening, sinking feeling that it must stop, that somehow she must tell him what has crawled into her soul and is slowly tearing it apart.

 

‘Da?’

 

Scraping her hand roughly over her eyes, she pulls herself out of his arms.

 

‘Does it ever stop?’ The words are out before she can stop them.

 

He flinches, the gesture quick and sharp as though she’d slapped him. Even in the dark she can feel it, feel the fire of anger’s phantom, the memories of Wentworth, of Randall, of the bestial helplessness that she knows that he has refused to feel since rising through the endless blue depths of his irises; blazing, burning in its intensity.

 

 _Better to call it forth_. She can see it in his eyes, flickering in and out of the guttering lamplight. See the tension rippling through every muscle of the carefully blank mask of his face like a taut bowstring.

 

 _Better to call it forth and face it boldly_ , she lifts her chin to him, their eyes locking in the darkness.

 

‘No’, his voice is a whisper in the silence.

 

‘No, _mo leannan_ , it canna ever stop,’ and she knows without having to be told that he is thinking of Roger, thinking of the fact that the man lying under his wife’s care has pledged himself to her and may never be able to fulfil that promise.

 

‘But,’ he pauses, reaching over to tuck an escaped lock of hair back behind her ear, the strands thick and curled in the dark.

 

‘Ye can grow stronger from it. The pain,’ he stops again, swallows, choosing his next words carefully. ‘The pain will become a part of ye, a dull ache at times, but still a part of you. I know it, your mother knows it, your aunt knows it and,’ a whispered kiss to her temple, ‘I think ye know some of it too, lass.’

 

_Wentworth._

 

_Culloden._

 

_The rising and the hellish pain that came with it._

 

_The twenty long and lonely years that her parents had endured, each living with half a heart, slowly trying to build a life from the fragments that remained of their old one._

 

‘I know’, she whispers, after a pause that feels like a century. ‘But, aunt Jenny?’ She knows that her aunt has seen pain, would have been blind not to see the echoes and ghosts of memory etched in her face, the sabre marks slashed across the lintel.

 

 _Ian had taken her aside last evening before she went to bed and showed them to her, great gouges over the lintel in the hall._ _‘The red coats’, he had told her, pointing up at them, red wounds bursting through the bleached and faded wood._

 

_‘Ye’ll know of the Clearances, I expect?’_

 

_She had nodded, but she knew very little. She knew only what Roger and her Mother had told her, what she had gleaned from pouring over documents searching for some trace of the myth that had incarnated itself to be her Father. Her real, true, living Father, Jamie Fraser._

 

_She hadn’t lived through it, not like him. Not like Ian or Jenny or Fergus or Young Jamie who had held the very bones of Lallybroch with the estates and its’ tenants and farms together with blood and sweat and sheer, pig-headed determination._

 

_‘We keep it here to show the weans what the English do’, a slice of uncharacteristic darkness had entered her uncle’s voice and a shiver had coursed through Brianna’s chest, a ghost walking over her grave. A ghost walking amongst them, the ghosts of the children her aunt had lost in the bleak, hungry hardship of the years after Culloden, the cousins now little more than names that she would never get to meet._

 

‘She was ten when our mother died, Jenny was,’ Jamie says at last, the security of his hand stroking her hair over and over again, catching strands of it between his fingers and letting them fall.

 

‘It was the day after the funeral and when I came into the kitchen to see her kneeling on a stool, using both hands to hold the mixing bowl,’ his eyes are sharp shards of brilliant blue in the guttering lamplight, glistening with unshed tears. ‘And I could see that she’d been weepin’, as I had, for her eyes were all red with her standing in our mother’s apron, folded up under her arms and the strings wrapped twice around her waist.’

 

He pauses, his hand caught midstroke.

 

‘Ye dinna die of it, _mo chuisle_. And Roger Mac willnae, either.’

 

_Roger._

 

Caught up in her grief, in her memories over Frank, she had almost forgotten the source of them.

 

‘Can you…?’

 

Her question is cut short by a long, pointed blue look flickering in and out of the shadows.

 

‘You’re better off not knowing, lass. Not until he can tell ye that himself.’

 

‘And Frank?’ His eyes harden at the name, looking at somewhere deeper in the shadows of the barn. ‘Can you explain that?’

 

The tightening of his hand clasped in her hair, tells her that he can’t.

 

‘No, lass. I willnae tell ye that. But, believe me, no one dies of it. Not you, nor me.’

 

She feels a small, tremulous smile catch at her lips at that, finding an odd comfort in his words. Moving round to face him, she takes his hands, feeling the warmth and weight flood into her own.

 

‘Mama… She never knew… Never thought…’ A wobble of impending tears threatens to betray her and he squeezes her hands tighter, slowly raising them so that lie over his heart, the small knot of scar tissue left there by Jack Randall’s brand.

 

‘I know _mo nighean_. And ye’re strong enough for what must be done, believe me.’

 

‘Am I?’

 

Rising to his feet in a rustle of hay, he considers her, face caught in shadows, his stark glowing white and brilliant in the lamplight.

 

Reaching a hand out to her, she stands and faces him, nose to nose, drinking in the soft male sweat, the sweet pungent odour of mingled human and animal that clings to him. The beginning of a beard caress his chin, the bruising highlighting his lower lids making his eyes seem brighter in the gloom.

 

‘ _Mo nighean ruriadh. Red haired lass_ ’, he murmurs, bringing her closer, one hand cupping her face and she remembers how he had held her in those first, tentative moments in the print shop.

 

‘Aye, lass’, he pauses, hands now still on her shoulder, drawing her in. ‘Come away now. It’s late.’

 

* * *

 

They walk slowly back to the house, watching the lights of Lallybroch manor come into view. The parlour windows with his Mother’s rose briar whispering their shadows in the chilled February breeze are a flickering blaze of light and Jamie can just make out Claire’s shadow standing with her back to the window, bent over the camp bed.

 

Brianna moves slowly in his wake, each step sluggish with exhaustion. Her father’s words a puzzle in her brain, some she can make sense of, some that in the depths of her own heart, she has felt and known and understood, but others, the unspoken words, still tear at her.

 

_Frank Randall and his seven times great uncle, Jack._

 

_Wentworth._

 

_Roger Mackenzie and their shared kinship._

 

_Culloden._

 

_Snowy barking, his tail thudding urgently against the lino, the rustle of the azaeleas in the thick late summer breeze._

 

_Frank Randall moving slowly through the hallway, dark eyes glittering with things that she hadn’t understood._

 

The steady tread of her father’s footsteps mixed with the rustle of night sounds, slowly fade as she listens, her soul rise slowly into being.

 

The voice that she had fought against in the barn, comes slowly; for a moment she hopes, selfishly perhaps, that it will it not come at all.

 

She stops, watching her father’s shadow move slowly down the hill. His own demons had come to him in the barn she knows, demons that had been tormenting him ever since he had brought Roger back, poised on the gulf of dreadful understanding.

 

 _You dinna die of it_ , he had said and she had tried to believe him. Had tried to understand but found that she could not, because the pain of her knowledge was almost too much to bear.

 

_And if I do? If I cannot bear it? What then?_

 

She stands quite still, her eyes travelling upwards to the stars, pulling the blanket tighter about her shoulders, trembling.

 

_If I cannot bear it, what will you do? What can you do?_

 

The waves of helplessness shudder through her, making her teeth rattle as she bites her lip down against a sudden sob as she stares up at the heavens, invoking the names of the stars that Frank and Claire had taught her on holiday in Maine, whispered against her lips like a prayer.

 

_Betelgeuse. Sirius. Orion. Antares._

 

The familiar names invoke memories of standing on a hill in the depths of autumn, listening to Claire, wash over her. They shiver against her skin, a ghost of her past life vanishing into darkness.

 

 _The Pleiades. Cassiopeia. Taurus._ _Frank Randall’s hand on her shoulder, a shiver of a smile catching at his lips that merges into Jamie, gripping her hands, laughing with her as she tried to work the printing press._

 

With a great, shuddering breath, she lets go.

 

Lets go of the memories, reaching beyond them, to the familiar words of her childhood, the nuns moving in soft darkness in the classroom, the brilliant white fabric of her first communion dress, the smell of ash and incense mingled in confession.

 

_‘… Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.’_

 

She breaths in slowly, letting the cold sweetness of the Highland air envelop her completely.

 

_‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’_

 

The knot that has encased her shoulders relaxes and she slumps forward, sudden tears blurring the darkness and only just managing to catch her footing before she falls. She feels weaker than she ever has done, her heart bare and crying in the cold, but stronger too.

 

Stronger in the knowledge that whatever happened, and happen it must, Jamie Fraser would be there, fighting, It brings some comfort.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to read and review. Comments, suggestions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x
> 
> Song suggestions: The Brightest Star in the North from Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar's Revenge OST


	15. From Whom No Secrets Are Hid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Swallowing their fears of the unknown, Jamie and Claire tell Jenny and Ian the truth about Brianna and Claire's presence in 1767

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to read and review this! Your support means the world to me and I can't quite believe that this is the final chapter in this story before the epilogue!
> 
> Chapter title comes from the Collect for Purity

 It was a peaceful morning. The bread had risen to a perfect, snowy mound, allowing Brianna to slip outside and gather eggs. Jamie can see her from the parlour window with a basket on her arm, slowly moving through the thistles and brambles and weeds; a soft, tuneless song flowing through the morning quiet. Occasionally, she bends to gather up some precious bounty, or shoo an inquisitive feathery body from getting under her feet, the soft chorus of clucks and squawks rising and falling in chorus.

 

_His daughter._

 

_Even after all this time, the words still send a thrill down his spine. A furnace of fierce pride leaping in his heart._

 

__His daughter here, alive and thriving as she laughed with Fergus and the little ones, scooping up wee Matthew who had taken to her like a duck to water into her arms and was now playing with her hair, the fiery gleam cascading down her shoulders. The openness and wildness of the Highlands suited her, bringing a gleam to her eyes and a flush to her cheeks.__

 

__He had been worried for her. In the days and weeks after they had discovered the letter, a small voice had niggled at his brain like an itch that he could not quite reach. A voice that had told him over and over that she did not belong here, that her place was back beyond the stones, back in her own time two hundred years hence that she had so recklessly left to find him._ _

 

__‘Jamie?’_ _

 

__He is so lost down memory lane that he thinks that the hands around his waist are a figment of his imagination. It is only when lips kiss his jaw and the fingers tighten round him, reaching up to grip his hands, does he realise that it is Claire._ _

 

 ‘Away with the faeries, are you?’ There is a soft smile to her voice and he cannot help but feel his lips quirk at the sound of it.

 

‘Just thinking.’

 

The hum of agreement is low in her throat as she moves round to stand beside him, their hands clasping as she follows his gaze to where Brianna had the girls, Maggie’s children, who had come to help with the first harvest, playing some form of clapping game.

 

 From the camp bed, Roger Mac stirs, but does not wake, restless in sleep.

 

‘How is he?’ Jamie keeps his voice low as not to wake the injured man, the memories of their arrival at Lallybroch, of Mullins Cove; the short, flat crack, Mackenzie’s scream of pain that had ripped the night apart, Brianna clinging to him, her body trembling with silent sobs rearing behind his eyes.

 

 ‘He’ll survive’, Claire’s eyes burn bright and golden in the quiet, as she turns to kiss him in reassurance. It was soft and warm and he can taste mint on her breath. The golden eyes that he loves so dearly, that had come to him so often in dream or fever shimmer before him and she swipes fiercely at the tears with the back of her hand.

 

‘Ach, lass! What’s amiss?’

 

He cups her face in his hands, smoothing the lines of her cheekbones, tracing the new softening sharpness of time not witnessed lying there.

 

 ‘It… It’s…’ She stops and swallows audibly. ‘I just… Oh bloody hell!’ His smile grows wider at her frustration, for this is the wife he knows, the wife who pattered about and swore and lived and loved with all the fullness of her being. He clicks his tongue against his teeth and reaches up to tuck away a loose curl behind her ear.

 

 ‘I’m afraid’, she says at last, gripping his hands.

 

 ‘I’m afraid that we must lose her’, she turns to see Brianna laughing with Fergus, her hair a sun stroked mass framing her face. ‘Lose them both.’

 

‘Mm’, he lets his hand rest on her chest, turning her fully towards the window. Deep in his heart he had known it, known it when she had shown him the photographs, those snapshots of another life, another time that he had no knowledge of.

 

He had not wanted to speak of it then and does not wish to now. Does not want to break the spell, that beautiful, binding spell that binds them all together.

 

‘I ken that well enough’, his voice is gruff in his throat and he swallows before continuing. ‘And I ken what we must do next. I know that I shouldna grieve for it- but I do.’

 

 She moves closer, resting her head on his shoulder.

 

 ‘What d’you mean?’ The words are tremulous and tentative and his heart breaks to hear them, holding her close, letting his strength flow into her, hoping that it would be enough.

 

 ‘Ian, _mo nighean don._ And Jenny. They must know, _a ghraidh._ Ye know they must.’

 

‘I know’, she says simply.

 

 ‘If she must go,’ he bends to brush his lips against the nape of Claire’s neck, the skin tingling at his touch. ‘We will be with her- always. It’s true what ye say, Sassenach, ye never truly lose them. Ye can’t.’

 

 ‘I love you’, he hears her whisper in reply and his heart replies with the same words. He does not need her to tell him how much he means it.

 

* * *

 

 

They find Jenny in the parlour that evening, knitting with Brianna, Roger and Ian.

 

 Brianna’s cheeks are flushed with heat, her slanted eyes, the exact copy of her father’s and aunt’s, bright and burning.

 

Instinctively, Claire goes to Roger, placing a hand on his forehead and then two fingers against his neck, feeling for a pulse.

 

 The green- glass eyes flicker open at her touch and Brianna reaches for his hand as he struggles to find his voice.

 

‘W… Where…?’

 

His voice is little more than a croak as he licks his lips, trying to dispel the dryness that has encased them, eyes widening as they take in the array of faces swimming in and out of focus.

 

‘You’re at Lallybroch, _mo mac,’_ Ian’s voice is soft and low and Claire sees Jamie glance at him sharply but says nothing. ‘Ian Murray, at your service. Welcome to ye.’

 

Roger nods, eyes darting to Brianna who tightens her grip on his hand, eyes soft and tender.

 

 ‘ _I’m here’,_ they seem to say. ‘ _I’m here and it’s going to be all right. We’re going to be all right.’_

 

 Jamie’s heart twists at the sight, twists at the sight of them and Ian and Jenny and the knowledge that they must impart to them. The silence is deafening, the only sound coming from the steady click of the needles, Jenny’s eyes darting from her brother to Claire to Roger and Brianna and back again.

 

 ‘You’re back,’ a hint of strain tugs at Jenny’s voice, her eyes fixed on Claire. Shadows of sleeplessness smudge her eyes and for once the lines etched in her face show her age, and more. Ian reaches for his wife’s hand, wide eyed and silent.

 

Claire can only nod.

 

‘I… We…’ She glances across the room to Jamie, standing with his left arm resting on the windowsill that looked out over the garden, the stiff fingers of his left hand drumming a restless tattoo against the weathered wood.

 

‘It is you, isn’t it, Claire?’ Jenny’s voice is tentative, familiar, but not the voice of the woman she remembers.

 

 ‘Yes’, she says quietly, taking a step towards Jenny that feels like twenty.

 

‘Yes, it’s me’, she moves to take Jenny’s hands, the rush of events from the night before flooding her face.

 

‘Ye’ve not changed’, Jenny whispers, reaching up to touch Claire’s face in wonder. Her fingers are cool and smell of herbs and red-currant jam mixed with the faint hint of ammonia and lanolin from the dyed wool in her lap.

 

Beside her, Ian nods and steps forward to hug Claire hard, standing back a little awkwardly, dark eyes smiling in welcome.

 

But still the unasked question remained hanging, throbbing in the silence turning Jenny’s touch to ice.

 

 ‘ _Where were you? Why are ye here? Why did ye come back?’_

 

 From her position at Roger’s bedside, Brianna senses the electricity radiating from her parents, the words that must somehow be said choking in the evening dusk.

 

 ‘I…’ She stops, suddenly lost for words. A pulsing energy radiates from Jenny, all love and tenderness evaporated as she sits in the quiet, waiting.  Her face is a mask, a soldier’s mask that makes Jamie look at Ian, their eyes locking in shared memory.

 

_They had been ten years old and Jenny was thirteen, playing soldiers in the small clearing in the woods behind the broch. Night was falling; a long, summer night where the light barely faded from dawn to dusk and Jenny was standing in the clearing, face white and trembling, watching a leveret struggle in the makeshift snare of rope and iron that Ian and Jamie had set the night before._

 

__She had always hated watching living things, innocent things, die.__

 

___And yet she had watched them. Had had to watch them as Lallybroch was forced under the iron grip of the Clearances. The grip that brought cold and hunger and fear; desperate, dreadful fear to those that she held most dear.__ _

 

 ‘Why have ye come now?’ Her voice is colourless, but the sting of accusation is audible and it makes Brianna stiffen. ‘Why not stay in France where ye could be warm and safe?’

 

 _ _ __France?____ Brianna shoots a questioning look at Jamie, who shakes his head not looking at her, eyes trained on Jenny.

 

‘ _A leannan’,_ Ian’s voice holds a conciliatory note, but Jenny ignores him, her grey-blue eyes so very like her brothers’ fixed unblinkingly on Claire.

 

‘I wasn’t in France’, Claire says at last, the words hanging for a moment before crashing to the ground.

 

 ‘I was in Boston’, her mother’s voice matches Jenny’s for coldness, the sound of it sending a shiver down her spine. Blindly, she reaches for Roger’s hand again, wanting something to hold, something to anchor her to reality before her mother speaks the final, fatal words that she knows must come.

 

‘I was living two hundred years from now, thinking Jamie was dead.’ Her mother’s voice was rising with every word, a sure sign that she is struggling to keep the torrent of emotions that Jenny’s accusation has uncorked under control.

 

 ‘Mama…’ The word has left Brianna’s lips before she can stop herself, but Claire ignores it.

 

‘I would have given my _soul_ to help you Jenny, believe me. But I’m not magic. I told you to plant potatoes and greens because I’d read about the famine that Culloden would bring, but even if I had been here, I wouldn’t have been able to- I _couldn’t_ have done anything to stop it.’

 

Claire’s face is white, her chest heaving as she finishes. Roger’s nails dig deep and painful in Brianna’s palm but she knows that the pain is nothing compared to the agony that her mother is enduring under Jenny, that the stab of nails biting into flesh is nothing compared to having the scabbed wounds of the past ripped open afresh.

 

 It is some time before Jenny speaks again.

 

 ‘And your daughter and her man? Why are they here when we have more than enough mouths to feed? Can ye tell me that?’

 

From his place by the window, Jamie stiffens as Ian says sharply, ‘that’s enough _mo ghraidh.’_

 

‘Enough!’ Jenny’s laugh is a bark of bitterness that makes the hairs on Brianna’s neck stand on end. ‘Nay Ian, it’s not nearly enough.’

 

‘Boston, ye say? That would be the Colonies, then?’ Claire nods wordlessly. Jenny’s voice is low and deadly as she continues, daring anyone to stop her.

 

 ‘And do they have hunger there? Do bairns starve at their mother’s breast because they’re too weak to suckle? Do women get turned out of their homes because their menfolk have been put to the sword?’

 

‘Ye’ve said your bit, Janet’, Jamie says, sharp-edged voice suddenly ringing in the quiet. An angry flush has spread red and livid across his cheekbones and Brianna can see that he is struggling to keep his temper, moving to stand beside Claire, facing his sister.

 

 ‘Ye would insult _my_ wife and daughter, for ye do insult them both, by saying such things?’ She cannot see his face, but Brianna is sure that his eyes match Jenny’s, identical slits of blazing, burning blue, white-hot with resentment.

 

 ‘Ye know as much I do that it canna, it wouldna change a thing, _a nighean na ghalladh!_ ’

 

 Jenny does not flinch at the accusation, her gaze fixed on Jamie, face blanched white. An accusatory look flashes into Ian’s kind, dark eyes, but is ignored.

 

‘I ken what my wife is, _a pluithar,’_ Jamie’s voice is low, the same danger that had stung at Jenny’s words, lacing his own. ‘And she’s no witch.’

 

 ‘She was tried at Cranesmuir on the word of a foolish girl who wanted me and resented her for having me. She walked through fire to be here, to find me. Her and my daughter both. And… I sent her back because I was afraid. _I_ was afraid, a leannan, of what the British would do to her, what they would do to us all, if they found her here. I sent her back and if it’s vengeance ye seek, _mo leannan,_ take it out on me, not her.’

 

 ‘Sent…?’ Ian’s hand that has been resting protectively on his wife’s shoulder, tightens its’ grip, dark eyes wide and questioning.

 

‘He sent me because of Culloden, because of Brianna’, Claire’s voice is so low that it is almost lost in the quiet. ‘Those stones- you have no idea- neither of you…’ She trails off, turning to look helplessly at Jamie who crosses the room in two strides to meet her, pulling her wordlessly into an embrace, eyes still fixed on Jenny.

 

‘Aye’, Jenny nods, seeming to slump where she sits, as if the iron rod that has held her up has been pulled out through her head. ‘Aye, I ken that,’ the fire that had blazed against the fierce blue of her gaze ebbing away, leaving her looking haggard, a shell of herself.

 

Brianna’s heart twists in her chest at the sight of her aunt sat slumped in the padded armchair and realises just how much it had cost Janet Murray to hold Lallybroch together in the years after the Rising.

 

 ‘Ye’ll stay then?’ A shy, tremulous smile is cutting at her lips, a ghost of the tight, white faced anger that had clouded her features moments before. ‘Ye’ll take good care of him? Ye will, aye?’

 

 Brianna watches Jamie nod, untangling Claire from him and motioning her towards his sister.

 

 She watches Claire nod too, slowly closing the gap between them to take Jenny’s hands, worn and rough, the bones as small and as fragile as birds’ wings; a similar, tentative smile gracing her own lips.

 

 ‘I will,’ she says, the words ringing with sincerity. ‘I promise.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to read and review! Comments, suggestions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x


	16. Epilogue: A Declaration of Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Haunted by the memories of the battle of Culloden, Jamie finds solace in the wife and child that he thought he would never meet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to read and review this! Your support means the world to me and I am really sorry that this has taken so long to be written, inspiration and time have sadly been in short supply of late.

_Lallybroch: April 1767_

 

‘Jamie?’

 

 It is late evening and Claire has not seen him all day. He is standing by the window, the sill framed by his mother’s rose briar, looking out onto the garden. His shadow looms long and large across the flagstone floor, caught in the blazing bursts of fading light. From the kitchen, she can make out Jenny scolding one of the many children that frequented the house, the lush scent of roasted meat infused with herbs wafting through the passageway to the parlour. 

 

 The smile he gives her is tentative, his brow furrowed as he pulls himself up to meet her. The lines are deeper than she remembers, his gaze taking her in, but not seeing her.

 

Not truly.

 

 ‘Jamie, what is it?’

 

Crossing the room, she reaches for him. His hand replies, reaching to grip hers, his left hand with its’ two stiff fingers that she had mended with her heart in her throat, her whole being flowing into the broken man who had lain on the bed before her. The pad of his thumb slides further, falling into the crevice of skin between her thumb and index finger, worrying the lines, veins and tendons that lay on the inside of her wrist.

 

‘I keep thinking… Keep seeing…’ His breath is coming out in desperate, strangled sobs; the salt stinging hot and wet on the back of her neck.

 

  _A ghost of a man._

 

_A memory of a man clinging to the hope that his life, so cruelly kept to him by Nature’s hand, would soon be over._

 

__A man who watched the subjection of his kinsman to their placement in history by means of a British army officer’s leger, the stripping away of everything he knew, played in ghastly slow motion before his broken vision.__

 

‘I’m here’, she whispers, slipping a hand beneath his shirt, the warmth of his work rising through the coils of muscle lying under his skin. Skin on skin, falling into the scars that lattice his back, scars given by Jack Randall, a lifetime ago.

 

‘I see Rupert and… Duncan… And Ewan… And Angus… And Giles McMartin and Frederick Murray fall… Ian’s kin… Over and over and I try to reach them but I canna… I canna…’

 

 He shudders to a stop, gulping air, clinging to her tighter, his head buried in her shoulder.

 

 ‘ _A Dhia, mo nighean don,_ they were boys younger than Brianna! And we… I… I couldna… I couldna…’

 

His breath comes out in ragged gasps, his pulse a distorted, throbbing beat in his neck.  

 

In the hallway, she hears Brianna call something that is answered by Jenny and then the uneven clunk of Ian’s wooden leg against the flagstone floor. Her world is shrinking, caught up entirely in the man whose sobs were shuddering to a hiccoughed stop in her arms. 

 

 He had not spoken of Culloden since their return and she had not wished to press him. The joy of their reunion had been undercut by the need to find each other again, to tell each other their own stories, of the people that they had become in the long and lonely years spent apart, without remembering the desperate heartache of their parting.

 

_A stone circle, bathed in a cool, bright dawn._

 

_A dragonfly encased in amber, wrapped in a muck-stained handkerchief pressed into a cold and shaking hand._

 

 _The throbbing sting of a knife cutting slowly into the flesh of her palm, a lingering kiss that smelt of salt and fire and longing._  

 

When they had returned to Lallybroch here had been time to talk; to relearn all the half-forgotten things that she knew of him and he of her, to find out all the new facets that experience had polished and simply take pleasure in each other’s presence.

 

Until now, it had seemed enough.

 

 She had not wished to force him to dig up the desperate, painful memories of a battle joined in the hope that at the end, his life would be finished.  

 

She had not wished to rip open old wounds that lay like jagged scars across his memory. 

 

_Lying on a flagstone floor, watching the light lighten and darken through the thatch, the lower part of his body a mass of undefinable pain._

 

_Duncan MacDonald standing to give his name one last time, his figure a hazy blur through fever fired eyes. The scratch of the pen, the British clerk’s voice full of false cheerfulness._

 

_It had all been a farce, a complete and utter farce as one by one his kinsmen marched outside._ _The volley of short, sharp cracks and he ran his tongue over cracked lips; hoping, praying that his turn would come soon._

 

_A baby’s grave in the Bois de Bologne. A silver christening spoon, one of twelve small and alone amid the great green expanse of the graveyard. A girl playing in the garden, laughing in the dusky Autumn twilight at the camera with a string of silver fishes._

 

_The clean, sharp Highland air mingled with the stink of rotten flesh as the wagon bed jolted and the wound in his leg gaped open; blood staining the soiled bandages in hot and sticky scarlet._

 

‘I’m here.’ She can feel the hot, salty, wetness staining his cheeks as he pulls himself out of her arms, the grip on her elbows suddenly painful. Bloodshot blue eyes gleam wide and ragged with emotion under the crop of wild, red hair and she feels her heart crack at the sight of it. The same eyes, the same hair that graced their daughter, the child that he had given all to save.

 

A soft evening breeze flutters through the window, bringing with it the voices of the men as they came in from the fields- Young Jamie and Fergus roaring with laughter at a distant joke. It catches at his curls, soft and wet and snarled around her fingers.

 

 The front door bangs open and she hears Joan Murray call across the kailyard, answered by the bounding yelps of the dogs and Brianna running with them, the faint patter of corn against the stone bringing the cluster of chickens to bed.

 

 So much life, so much light, that had teetered perilously on the edge of destruction and her heart aches as she holds him closer, burying her face in the fiery crown of his hair burning in the dying light.

 

‘I love ye, Claire’, the words are thick and husky as he pulls himself out of her embrace.

 

 ‘Hush. I love you, Jamie. I’m here.’

 

_I’m here._

 

_And if she hadn’t? if Brianna hadn’t taken her place at the stones, hadn’t taken the journey through time and souls before her and she had walked away, trembling with words left unsaid?_

 

She shudders, clutching his hands; the warm weight of his knurled fingers clasped around hers, her right hand that miraculously still bore the ring he had made for her with its thin, interlace pattern, placed protectively over his left. 

 

‘ _Mo nighean don’,_ he murmurs, bringing their clasped hands up to his lips and kissing the ring reverently.

 

‘We have all the time in the world now, my Sassenach. You, me and Brianna. Never…’ His voice chokes a bit and she pulls him closer, tracing the line of cheek and jaw, his skin still holding a flush from his work.

 

‘I will never forget it, Jamie’, she whispers firmly.  'we have survived, you and I. We are stronger than we were, yes?’  

 

‘Aye, _mo Sorcha._ That we do.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to read and review this! Comments, questions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to read and review! Comments, questions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x
> 
> Song suggestions: Tales of Brianna, Running out of Time, Destiny on Culloden Moor and A Fraser Officer Survived from Outlander Season 2 OST all work well with this chapter.


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